DEVELOPMENT OF A CONTROL SYSTEM FOR AN AUTOMATIC ROAD SIGN REMOVING EQUIPMENT USING HIGH PRESSURE WATER-JET

Abstract

Resent removal work for road signs has been labor intensive and required times since it has been done manually using shaving type equipment. While traditional process is conducting, there are traffic jams caused by the passing control, and happened unexpected accidents to workers working at dangerous road circumstance. Besides, in current shaving method, there are high potentialities on the air pollution as well as the explosive accident occurred by using a propane gas. So, as an alternative, we have studied to develop the automatic erasing equipment made up with a high pressure water-jet system and automatic control system, mobile system; Wate-rjet system consists of an intensifier and nozzles to give a high pressure and spray on the sign, and automatic control system is composed of one axis robot using a hydraulic servo actuator controlled by a lever, And as a mobile system, a truck plays an important role for the transport of equipment and the forward movement in a removal process. In this paper, we have analyzed the characteristics of road signs and have investigated current erasing methods in the field. And we have organized and designed automatic erasing equipment, and we have made a basic experiment to find out the optimal spray condition as like the spray distance, spray angle and injection pressure.