The 3800 CR from Wirtgen America Inc. offers the ability to cold-in-place recycle a full-lane of pavement in one pass, stabilizing with either foamed asphalt “green mix”, or any other stabilizing medium such as asphalt emulsion or lime or cement slurry, but with a twist: with a conveyor mounted, it also will serve as a full-lane cold mill.

The 3800 CR utilizes the same platform as the existing Wirtgen 2200 CR, but is supplied with a full-lane, 12-ft. 6-in. (3.8 m)-wide drum and uses a screed width to match.

In its recycle mode, the 3800 CR’s full-lane working width is complemented by a recycling depth of up to 6 in. (15 cm). In the cold milling mode, it will mill to 13.75 in. (35 cm) deep in the upcut mode, although it can operate in either upcut or downcut mode after alteration. This involves that the drum be removed and turned 180 deg, and fit with either upcut or downcut planetary drives.

At the heart of the 3800 CR, the cutter, an integral gradation beam is positioned in front of the cutter. This beam is held under hydraulic pressure on the pavement surface to avoid “chunking” of asphalt into recycled mix. The 3800 CR’s drum takes Rhino HT11 cutting tools, which are mounted at .63 in. (1.6 cm) spacing, and holds a total of 294 tools or bits.

The Wirtgen 3800 CR is capable of pulverizing existing bituminous material with automatic depth controls to maintain the cutting depth to within plus/minus .25 in. (.6 cm) of specification. It features a positive means for controlling cross slope elevations.

In the recycle mode using emulsion stabilization, the 3800 CR has a liquid metering device capable of adjusting the flow of asphalt emulsion to compensate for any variation in the speed of the machine, and delivers the needed amount of asphalt emulsion to within plus/minus 0.2 percent of the required design amount by weight of pulverized bituminous material. It utilizes an asphalt emulsion pump of sufficient capacity to allow emulsion contents up to 3.5 percent by weight of pulverized bituminous material, and contains automatic digital displays for both the flow rate and total amount of pulverized bituminous material and asphalt emulsion in appropriate units of weight and time.

In the recycle mode, because recycled, reclaimed pavement is placed immediately behind the 3800 CR, no windrow elevator or pickup machine — or additional paver — is required, saving labor, fuel and equipment costs, in addition to reducing the carbon footprint of the project.

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