Ameron concrete poles serve as Christmas trees in front of La Mirada, Calif., city hall.

Ameron sees bright future

for prestressed poles
Firm’s Pole Products Division in Fillmore, Calif.,
operates most automated plant of its khd
by Bill Blaha

Ameron, long recognized as a devel-
oper and innovator of concrete tech-
nologies, is applying the same kind of
expertise to its newest product line-
prestressed lighting and traffic poles.
Sold in a wide range of shapes,
sizes, colors and textures, the con-
crete poles are manufactured by Am-
eron’s Pole Products Division (which
has been making steel poles since
1950) at a 30,000 sq. ft. production
facility in Fillmore, Calif., some 50
miles north of Los Angeles. The plant
is the most automated of its type in
the industry.
Like other plants operated by Am-
eron, most of the equipment at the
Fillmore installation is company de-
signed and built. This time it was a co-
operative effort involving engineers in
the Pole Products Division and mem-
bers of the Corporate Equipment En-
gineering Department. Together, they
developed a whole set of unique meth-
ods and machinery for making the
specialty units.
Much thought, too, has gone into
the marketability of these products, to
make certain they have the flexibility
to meet every outdoor lighting need.
Three basic types of poles are manu-
factured. They include street, highway
and freeway lighting poles; traffic
poles; and high and low level area
lighting poles foruse at such places as
shopping malls, parking lots, school
grounds, parks, etc. Concrete street
lighting poles now account for roughly
90 percent of the plant’s volume.
Each category of pole is available
in four different design configurations:
round, octagonal, square and hexa-
gonal. These tapered poles are 8 to 40
ft. in length with base diameters from
6 to 12 in. and top diameters from 4
to 8 in. Moreover, they come in 10
colors and either as natural or exposed
aggregate (primarily black and white
marble).
Situated on a ldacre site at the foot
of the Sespe Mountain~the l a s t
refuge of the giant California condor
-the Ameron Pole Products plant in
Fillmore employs about 50 persons.
Key people are William Muller, plant
manager; Pete Carillo, plant superin-
tendent; Bob Conroy, production con-
trol manager; and Armando Berriz,
engineer.
Aggregate and cement supplies are
hauled in by truck and stored in a
4 yd., low-profile Ross batch plant.
The semi-automatic facility, just out-
side the plant building, has a four-
compartment aggregate bin that holds
100 tons and a cement silo with a ca-
pacity of 350 bbl. Equipped with dust
controls, the batch plant also has pro-
vision for bagged specialty aggregates
to be fed to the weigh hopper.
A semi-automatic, horizontal cage-
making machine, developed by Amer-
on, is used to fabricate the poles’ cir-
cumferential reinforcement. The elec-
trical weld is designed so that different
wire sizes and spacings can be handled.
These cages, along with special at-
tachments and inserts, are part of a
complete reinforcement assembly that
is placed into a closed mold at the
plant’s prestressing station. Each as-
Cage machine operator stockpiles automatically welded cages for concrete poles.
Pole form is spun prior to entering cur-
ing chamber.
Sixteen-acre plant is 50 miles north of Los Angeles.
Overall view of Ross batch plant (note
‘dust collector unit at right).
Four-cubic-yard Ross batch plant takes
care of all production needs.
sembly contains four to eight 7-strand
prestressing cables which are simul-
taneously tensioned to from 55 to 70
percent of their ultimate strength. As
part of a complete plant quality con-
trol program, the applied jacking stress
for each mold is recorded on a chart.
After the prepared mold is filled
with concrete, it is moved on a rail-
mounted transfer car (15 ft. long and
3 ft. wide) to the spinning station
where it is spun for approximately 15
minutes. When this operation is fin-
ished, the hermetically sealed mold is
rolled into an adjacent curing cham-
ber and subjected to a four to six-hour
curing cycle, depending on the type
of product. Inside temperatures go up
to 180 degrees.
Operator sets prestress tension where At the end of the cure period, the
steel rods emerge from pole head in
form. molds are removed from the back side
of the chamber and taken to the strip
ping station where the poles are
pushed out by a telescopic hydraulic
ram, also developed by Ameron. This
operation takes less than two minutes.
The pole is then picked up by a
monorail crane and brought to the pre-
blast storage area for preliminary
touch-up and grinding work. From
there it goes to the blasting, or texture,
station and is placed on two trolleys,
each supporting one end of the con-
 . _
.” _ _- _ -__ I - - _” d_” -!
Pole is pulled from form following cure.
Crete unit. As these trolleys rotate, the
pole travels longitudinally and spins
over the blasting wheel. This process,
which closely resembles sandblasting,
also takes about 15 minutes.
The pole is then hoisted by a bridge
crane and placed on another transfer
car-this one 15 ft. wide and large
enough to carry seven units-and
moved out to the storage yard. Hy-
draulic jacks on the transfer car lower
the poles onto a holding skid where
they receive a final touch-up and in-
spection.
A rail-mounted gantry crane then
stacks the poles in a horizontal posi-
tion, utilizing a special lifting device
which enables seven units to be picked
up at one time. The company-built
gantry has an 80 ft. span, runs on 350
Peterbilt rig is readied for job shipment.
Plant is at foot of Sespe Mountains-last refuge of giant California condor.
ft. of track and has a S-ton capacity.
According to Muller, the plant has
four basic types of molds which can
provide 50 different shaft styles as
well as 750 varying kinds of finished
poles, the latter based on the kind of
brackets used, the mounting system
employed, plus other installation fea-
tures.
Besides numbering each pole and
recording its jacking stress, the plant
does a number of other things to in-
sure good quality control. One pole
out of every 100 produced receives a
deflection test, while one out of every
300 is tested for ultimate strength. As
a further safeguard, concrete test cyl-
inders (6 in. x 12 in.) are put through
the spinning cycle on a per-batch or
per-shift basis. The curing time and
temperature for each pole is also
marked down on the chart.
Ameron’s prestressed concrete poles
are marketed primarily in Southern
California (Bakersfield to San Diego),
most of Arizona and Southern Ne-
vada. All of this sales work is han-
dled out of the Pole Products Divi-
sion’s office in Burbank. Divisional
offices, handling both steel and con-
crete poles; are also located in Oak-
land, Seattle and Denver. Sales are
made through distributors, directly to
utility companies and municipalities,
or to contractors.
The Ameron Pole Products Division
is headquartered in Oakland and oper-
ateS under the direction of D. E. Mac-
Leod, vice-president and general man-
ager. q
This Ameron pole stands on hilltop in
San Francisco.
Some 13,000 sq. ft. of Lockstone has been installed at Festival Theater in Niagara- Reinhard Schneider, president of Dura-
on-the-Lake, Ontario. stone Ltd.