Automated removal robots working for the DoD

While robots may apply paint or coat­ing to ele­ments when they are being fab­ri­cat­ed, there are also robots that auto­mate the removal of those paints and coat­ings as well. This auto­mat­ed removal has been adopt­ed by sev­er­al indus­tries, and even by the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense to use on their aircraft.

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Cen­ter for Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sci­ences, almost all heli­copters and tiltro­tors today have com­pos­ite main rotor blades that are sand­ed by hand, as well as impact-blast­ed to remove the paint, when need­ed. By using this man­u­al removal process, instead of auto­mat­ed removal, there is an increased risk of dam­age to the blades because of lack of appli­ca­tion consistency.

Also, the cen­ter states that the process not only lacks con­sis­ten­cy, but costs a lot of time as well. It takes a crew 372 hours to com­plete the removal process on the V‑22 Osprey, to ready it for the repair process, which only allows the crew to com­plete one air­craft a month for repairs.

By automat­ing removal of the paint and coat­ings from the V‑22 blades with a laser strip­ping sys­tem, the DoD would save $100k a year, as well as speed­ing up the auto­mat­ed removal process, allow­ing more air­craft through in that month time­frame. This will also great­ly reduce the haz­ardous waste that can be gen­er­at­ed dur­ing the process.

While the DoD is still test­ing this new robot­ic auto­mat­ed removal process, Robots​.com has sev­er­al robot mod­els avail­able that can auto­mate removal in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways. We have robots that sand, drill, route and mill, along with many oth­er removal processes.

Robots​.com is a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Motoman, KUKA, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and Fanuc indus­tri­al robot­ics. Our high­ly-qual­i­fied staff will work with you to build a sys­tem that is per­fect for automat­ing your removal process.

For more infor­ma­tion about automat­ing removal with Robots​.com, con­tact us today online or at 877−762−6881.