Vulcan Onshore Tip #25: Side Channel Modification

Many of our contractor customers have in the past modified the installation of Pile Hammer Side Channels to provide the following:

Spring mounting of Channels to prevent attrition during extremely hard driving.
Spring mounting of a Hammer Adapter to adapt one size Hammer to a larger size set of Leaders.

In either case we can provide special Cylinder Head attachments and hardware to implement both alternatives as illustrated above.

Note: What is presented here is a variation of another Raymond innovation: the inboard extension. All Raymond hammers were designed to ride in some kind of extension. The advantage of this is that it makes mating a system of hammers and leaders much simpler if the hammers can be run in more than one set of jaws, and an extension system is the easiest way to accomplish this.

Extensive details on the Raymond extension system are found in the Vulcanhammer.info Guide to Pile Driving Equipment.

One innovation that Raymond eventually went to was the use of rubber springs in place of the coil ones. In addition to lesser expense, when properly selected the rubber springs do a better job of dampening the hammer vibrations than the steel coil ones. It’s important that the structural integrity of the extension is sufficient to withstand both vibration and handing stresses.

Below: Vulcan 06 hammer riding in an extension.