unspooler project

Yeah - I was hoping with the winkie-smiley, I could forego the tag. ;-)

Thanks! Rich

Or go rolling down a hill and kill someone.

The trailer we used there was single reel and had a hydraulic tilt mechanism on the reel holder so you could roll the reel over, put the axle through and lock it onto the lift and it would lift it up and into the trailer to the parked position. Several miles of fiber optic cable per reel.

Except you need to forklift to load the reals on such a trailer, so you may as well just use the forklift to hold them if you have it anyway.

Ours didn't have hydrolyics. Four men rolled the spool of coax up the ramp and used comealongs to pull the axle up the mounts. This was in the early '80s and the trailers were from the mid '70s. There were usually dozens of construction workers on a job when a new cable system was being built so they weren't worried about enough manpower. By the time I ended up on that system it was 99% built. That just left extensions and repairs

And I just checked CraigsList; I don't see any cheap trailers in Bend or the Bay area. Either my searching is poor, or someone was there already.

The big issue with a separate tripod is we'd need to move it frequently, over bad terrain.

My alterative was something on the 3-point hitch, but then I realized it was a bit too heavy....

We don't have same; people cost $ so if I can leverage the machines, I will.

Times change, and the scale of the job has an impact. When you have a dozen spools leaving the compound every morning it meant that you had dozens of people at hand. Also, hardline is easy to damage on the spool. Drop one over on it's side and it will no longer pass the sweep test. Then you had very expensive rolls of hard to dispose of scrap.

Get a piece of rectangular tubing to fit over one of the forks. Get a piece of round pipe to go through the spool and weld it to the rectangular tubing.

John

It's interesting that I watched the crews build the Road Runner fiber optic internet backbone along the Central Florida highways around here for almost a month and never saw one fork lift. The first crew trenched and buried two colors of plastic conduit. (One for RR, the other for telephone). Another crew dug holes and installed the equipment vaults. The next crew pulled in the RR fiber, nd the next group installed the equipment and terminated the fiber.

Except you need to forklift to load the reals on such a trailer, so you may as well just use the forklift to hold them if you have it anyway.

But a Forklift may not be the best for straddling a trench. Most forks have a hole or two near the tips for hooking chains or installing hitch balls too. Just build a channel that will fit over the fork and weld a 1/2 hub to the channel. Clamp the channel to the fork or if a hole in the tip area of the fork, drop a pin in to it.

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0Dan

Good point.

I guess they didn't have all the modern technology in Florida.

Learn to use what you have access to or have a big budget to buy or lease the stuff that is designed especially for the job at hand.

I designed and built a machine to lay cable when I had a job to run a

John

Find the company they hired and tell 'them' how to do their job.

Wow! 500 feet? You could have just rented a ditch wich for a little job like that. They built 'thousands' of miles with their method. That fiber backbone covers most of the US for all the cable TV companies that offer broadband.

What good is a forklift in an open ditch along a busy highway? The dirt was already soft, and there wasn't much room in the right of way. they trenched the area they were working, then backed the trailers off the road just ahead of where they were working and pulled it back to the previoous vault location including under driveways and side roads. The crew I talked to said it was down six feet or more, and that the bottom of the equipment vaults was a little over 12 feet below ground.

The tubing and fiber both had to be fed in as straight of a line as possible. The only place a forklift could have been used was on the highway.

Rather hard to change out reels....

No kidding. It would likely take another forklift. That's why the pros use custom trailers. :)

You guys have obviously no knowledge of what is called a prong for forklifts used to move any type of roll or spool with a central hole.

With this device it is a one man operation to move cable rolls, no come-alongs no manual pushing and shoving. The cable can be held on the prong and unspooled or could be put on a trailer with the prong.

I suggested making a prong for the rough terrain forklift. The spool could be held over the ditch and cable played off the spool.

John

You have their address?

I was considering using a Ditch Witch but in very sandy soil the ditch will cave in and you get a mess. The machine I designed and built did several other projects too. I build the machine for installing wire to my own building.

I am sure that more than one company laid the cable and they all did not use the same exact method. With a six foot ditch if you don't use shoring OSHA will have a field day with you. The soil type determines the method of operation. South Florida is loaded with coral and can be a real problem digging trenches or even setting electric poles.

John

That was over 10 years ago. They have moved on to some other part of the country, but if it bothers you so much, track them down. You think you know everything, so how hard can it be for you to get that information from RR?

Then you don't know how to use a ditch witch, or which version to do the job. The bigger versions will pull the conduit or pipe into the trench as it works. Watch one put a drain pipe to a septic tank some time. 12 feet deep and hundreds of feet is no problem for them. OTOH, if you have the smallest version that was made to put a phone or CATV wire 12 inches into the ground, it's hopeless.

Cites?

And Cincinnati requires dynamite to make holes for power & phone poles.