Radiodetection

SPX Radiodetection, founded in 1970, is a worldwide company that focusing on developing equipment to make construction work faster, safer, and more affordable. Utility companies across the globe trust the RadiodetectionCAT 4 Plus Underground Cable Avoidance Toolsf to ensure that any damage to buried service lines is avoided during excavation and the RD7000+ and RD8000 to accurately locate buried lines. Radiodetection is committed to meeting customer needs and continuing to push location technology through innovation and design. All products are manufactured to the highest standard and manufacturing operations are ISO 9001 accredited. Radiodetection also provide extensive warranty and technical support service.

The Radiodetection White Paper "Reducing Damage to Underground Cables and Pipes" highlights how to use the best cable avoidance tools to focus on improving the safety. Locating underground services by using a cable and pipe locator before excavating saves time and reduces costs by lowering the number of cable and pipe strikes during excavation.

Radiodetection is the world's premier manufacturer and developer of cable avoidance and detection tools. Utility companies and private contracting firms use these precision instruments to help them to install and protect their infrastructure networks, i.e., all the advanced cabling involved in massive utilities projects.

Radiodetection has decades of Research and Development under their belt and focuses on delivering the best tools for the job through exclusive dedication to the locating and cable avoidance field. Additionally, Radiodetection facilities are all ISO 9001 accredited, and the product line carries a wide range of industry-specific approvals. So, you know that you're going to get the highest quality, trusted tool when you purchase Radiodetection.

The first product in the Radiodetection Line that we want to look at is perhaps the most common and popular model, the Radiodetection CAT 4 Plus. We'll get into the specifics of the tool a little bit below in this article, but here are a few quick points. The "CAT" in the name is an acronym for "Cable Avoidance Tool", and so as the name implies, this device is used to determine the location of buried lines so that construction crews can safely dig without destroying and cabling infrastructure. It is designed with a whole host of unique features to accomplish this end well and accurately (we'll cover it more below).

The next important instrument in the Radiodetection line is the Radiodetection RD7100. This tool is a more precise device for tracing and marking buried utilities. The CAT4 is more specifically designed around simply avoiding buried lines, while this tool is geared toward accurately mapping the layout of the underground cabling.

Moving up the ladder once more, we find the Radiodetection RD8100. This tool serves the same purpose as the RD7100 but builds in a ton of extra features and is considered the flagship model for cable location and mapping. It comes packed with features including, but certainly not limited to, multiple antennas for different locating methods, GPS logging, IP65 ingress protection, and the ability to trace high-impedance utilities. We'll cover it more in detail below, but suffice to say here that this unit is the top-of-the-line for working with utilities location.

The simple answer to this question is in the name itself – a tool that helps the user to avoid buried cables. Digging a little deeper here, a cable avoidance tool is a precision electromagnetic locating device that uses a variety of electrical signal-based tracing methods to trace and pinpoint a range of underground cables that you'll find in utility services (power, water, etc.).

In the construction and maintenance of utility services, especially in densely populated areas where overhead utility lines are not feasible, there can be dozens if not more buried power lines and other cables. When adding to a system, surveying, or excavating, it is crucial to avoid striking these lines during the digging and building work. Suppose workers proceed unawares of the buried lines and unintentionally strike them. In that case, a safety hazard is created for those workers and the public, as well as high costs of repair, downtime, and potential employee injury. Thus, it is of utmost importance to accurately trace and locate buried lines so that they can be avoided in the excavation and construction processes. Hence the name "cable avoidance tool". Radiodetection cable avoidance tools are designed specifically with these kinds of utility jobs in mind and incorporate many features to that end. Let's have a look at one now.

The Radiodetection CAT 4 Plus is probably the most popular Radiodetection Cable Locator for the kind of jobs we've just discussed. It is absolutely jam-packed with features, so we'll do our best to cover many of the important ones here quickly.

The whole design of the CAT 4 Plus is oriented toward driving best practices in location while giving accurate results. As such, there a number of benefits to using this Radiodetection Line Locator over the competition's devices.

The CAT4 (we'll call it that from now on for simplicity's sake, just know it refers to the CAT 4 Plus and some upgraded versions) is designed to run on a constant dual frequency simultaneously. This means that in addition to having a frequency range suited to large cable location (as is common in many locators), it also detects a frequency suited to smaller diameter cabling like telecom twisted pairs and CATV cables, which are notoriously difficult to find and present a common strike risk.

On that note, the CAT4 features "Strike Alert", which will notify the user of shallow cabling that presents an imminent strike risk. This has been an extremely useful feature since Radiodetection introduced it and has been optimized on the latest iterations to cut down on any false warnings.

Another helpful feature is the so-called "SWING" notification. Best practice in cable location does not permit careless swinging that is too rapid or excessive. This can distort the signal coming to the locator wand itself and make it difficult to trace the buried cables or give off false readings. The CAT4 is able to sense excessive swinging that goes against proper locating technique and alert the user to return to a more controlled motion. These alerts are also stored in the datalogging so that later analysis can detect if anomalous readings are due to user error.

The CAT4 also features Dynamic Overload Protection for working in areas with high levels of ambient electricity that would overload most common locators. The CAT4 dynamically rejects electrical interference past a certain level, making it effective in job sites adjacent to things like substations and overhead power lines.

The CAT4 also features an "Avoidance Mode", which sweeps an area using the passive power, radio, and generator (Genny 4, detailed below) signals simultaneously. This catch-all mode makes it easy to quickly detect all buried lines regardless of type.

Two other features are important to mention here before moving on. First, the "CAL Safe" feature will notify you with a countdown of 30 days until the expiration of the CAT4's calibration. This helps you make sure that you never use a locator for an official documented job that does not meet the calibration requirements. Second, Radiodetection provides a robust reporting and logging software suite called C.A.T. Manager that can help track usage behavior, excavation sites using Google maps, traceable reports, and much more.

While there are still more benefits to the CAT4, that covers some of the major distinguishing ones.  Let's move on now to a brief discussion of the typical use of a CAT4.