DOWEL DRILL

Overview

When BC Place stadium needed a new roof, major upgrades were in order. One of the necessary upgrades involved drilling thousands of holes into concrete support beams for dowels used to attach reinforcing steel plates.  Many challenges were faced when designing this apparatus, including drilling upside down in a confined area, collecting all drill dust, moving the drill into position as quickly as possible and preventing repetitive strain on the operator.

We were able to design and use a pneumatic drill with a cylinder feed on a rotary plate that traveled along a set of steel guides. Set-up and positioning of the drill was fast and simple and a dust collector hood connected to a filtered vacuum system kept the working environment clean.