As a plumbing professional with varied capabilities, such as pipe bursting, it's useful for you to know the full range of pipe bursting heads available. With a comprehensive selection of tools and the versatility they provide, you’ll be ready to solve more scenarios on-scene and make your business more valuable as a service and a commercial endeavor. TRIC Tools is pleased to offer a varied selection of bursting heads for commercial and business projects. The following is some helpful information on how bursting heads best apply.
What They Do
There are various shapes and sizes of bursting heads, also known as expander heads. Knowing which to choose depends on the application. Primarily, they serve to break apart old pipes and press the pieces into the soil around them while pulling through a new replacement pipe.
In cases where pipe diameters need increasing or upsizing, bursting heads push out an annular space to accommodate larger pipes.
A Coordinated System
The bursting head selection should match the project’s needs, including your winch’s capacity, geotechnical considerations, pipe-diameter upsizing, and cutting accessories.
The equipment you use will be a factor. There are two bursting-machine types: pneumatic, or impact, and hydraulic, or static.
Static uses a consistent high-tonnage pull. Impact, which is the more common application, uses both continual tension and a repeated hammering effect to burst pipes. Each technique corresponds best to different sets of existing pipe materials and the type of bursting head assembly used.
Existing Pipe Materials
The type of material in the existing pipe informs the TRIC Tools bursting head assembly:
The TRIC Tools Standard pipe bursting heads are suitable for vitreous clay, cast iron, asbestos concrete, fiber conduit, and plastics.
An impact head, specific to pneumatic systems, is suitable for vitreous clay, cast iron, asbestos concrete, reinforced concrete, and ductile iron. The TRIC Tools Mini-Max driver, in particular, can use cable load to hammer past dresser couplings and compact soils.
Both swaged splitter and link-blade splitter assemblies provided by TRIC Tools are useful and even necessary for bursting cast iron, plastic, ductile iron, steel, and copper pipes.
An example case would be PVC piping, which requires a bursting head that’s mounted behind a cutting accessory. An while cast iron is more brittle and doesn’t typically require more than a basic assembly, ductile iron is not a brittle material and will typically require a splitting assembly.
Pipe Diameter
The diameters of both the existing and replacement pipes are also fundamental. A bursting head’s nose is typically narrower than the existing pipe. To keep the bursting head aligned and yielding a consistent overall bursting effect, its base must be larger than the existing pipe’s inside diameter.
The base must also exceed the diameter of the replacement pipe, even by a half-inch, to create space to relieve pipe friction and stress on the pulling machine and leave room to maneuver.
TRIC Tools Bursting Heads
As the first supplier to provide pipe bursting technology, TRIC Tools specializes in simple, compact, modular, and adaptable bursting heads. These include the TRIC standard and the innovative TRIC-Lock Lock-Head designs.
The 4, 6, and 8-inch TRIC Standard heads are the lighter designs with pipe-pulling configurations that allow for difficult entries and pipe-path bends.
The 4 and 6-inch TRIC-Lock bursting heads, however, with a Lock-Head design, do away with fusing the pipe to the head and PE caps. This design results in a faster and more convenient and efficient process and substantial savings.
Consult With Our Experienced Team
We have more than two decades of experience as providers in the industry. Whether you’re a municipality, a contractor, or a utility provider, the trained team at TRIC Tools can help you integrate the latest technologies and just about any type of trenchless pipe piercing equipment into your portfolio of services and equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to operate your equipment with complete efficiency and accuracy. Contact us to consult with our team.
