The national "little giant" has worked hard for 6 years to fill the domestic gap. Wuhan has developed robots to serve deep-sea high-end equipment

Workers engaged in sandblasting of metal surfaces are expected to be liberated from the harsh production environment with dust and harsh noise. The sandblasting robot developed by Wuhan "little giant" enterprise Hubei Sanjiang Boli Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sanjiang Boli"), which took 6 years to develop, will replace traditional manual operations.

In June this year, the 12-axis overhead crane-type special sandblasting robot produced by Sanjiang Boli was put into use at the deep-water marine equipment manufacturing base in Zhuhai, Guangdong. This is the first independently developed sandblasting robot in the domestic marine oil and gas equipment manufacturing industry. Previously, the sandblasting robots produced by the company served large state-owned enterprises such as CRRC, Sinopec, CNOOC, China Railway, China Railway Construction, and Aerospace Science and Industry.

The use of robots can protect workers

In June this year, the first domestically developed sandblasting robot was officially put into use at the Deepwater Marine Equipment Manufacturing Base in Zhuhai, Guangdong.

On August 1, the reporter saw in the Sanjiang Boli production workshop that the workers were busy and another sandblasting robot was ready to leave the factory.

This is an orange "big guy", composed of a mechanical bracket and several mechanical arms, 5 meters high and 8 meters wide, with a mechanical arm span of 6 meters and a total weight of 6 tons. The operator turns the handle in the cockpit outside the glass window, and the sandblasting robot can swiftly aim at the surface of the steel structure and complete the sandblasting operation in a few minutes.

"Manual sandblasting is very harmful to workers. At the beginning of the company's establishment, we had the idea of replacing manual work with machines." Wu Huage, general manager of Sanjiang Boli, said.

Sandblasting the metal surface is to spray gravel at high speed onto the surface of the metal workpiece to obtain a certain degree of cleanliness and roughness, which is convenient for subsequent electroplating, painting and other steps.

Talking about the hard work of sandblasters, Wu Huage described such a picture to reporters: in a sandblasting room of about 20 square meters, workers wearing headgear and protective clothing weighing more than 3 kilograms hold spray guns to carry out sandblasting operations. Because the steel sand flying out of the spray gun is fast and has strong impact, it is easy to get injured even if wearing protective clothing. "Sandblasters inhale dust for many years and are prone to occupational diseases such as silicosis. The deafening noise will also cause great damage to hearing."

One sandblasting robot can "carry" the workload of 10 workers. Wu Huage introduced that the operating range of the sandblasting robot can cover the entire sandblasting room, solving the problems of uneven manual spraying and inability to work continuously.

At present, 8-axis overhead crane sandblasting robots have been widely used in marine equipment manufacturing, bridge construction, rail transportation equipment manufacturing and other scenes, and a group of sandblasting workers have been liberated from harsh working conditions.

In the 18 years since its establishment, Sanjiang Boli has grown into a national-level specialized and innovative small giant, with 68 intellectual property rights, including 11 invention patents. It has also been rated as a national high-tech enterprise, a national science and technology-based small and medium-sized enterprise, and a single champion enterprise in Hubei Province's manufacturing industry.

The price is 2/3 lower than similar foreign products

The appearance of the sandblasting robot room.

18 years ago, Hubei Sanjiang Aerospace Coating Equipment Engineering Co., Ltd., the predecessor of Sanjiang Boli, was established as a subsidiary of China Sanjiang Aerospace Group. The factory was located in the former Hubei Bus Factory on Heinihu Road, Jiang'an District. Wu Huage, a technical transformation expert who has worked in Wuchang Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Group Co., Ltd. for 14 years, was transferred to the new company as general manager.

At this time, the sandblasting robots produced in Finland once monopolized the Chinese market. As a product agent, Sanjiang Boli is responsible for the sales and promotion of imported sandblasting robots.

"The sales effect is not ideal." Wu Huage said, "At that time, the price of imported sandblasting robots was generally around 15 million yuan, which was an unbearable high cost for most companies. Moreover, the after-sales service of imported products was not timely. If there was any problem with the machine, it was difficult to solve it in the first time."

"Sandblasting robots are the general trend, and we want to be the 'first person to try it'." At that time, the technology in the field of automatic sandblasting in China was still blank. In the early stage of research and development, Wu Huage's team could only start by imitating imported products. From the research of related products to the improvement of basic drawings and the production of product models, we adjusted parameter settings, made precise calculations, and started over again.

"I didn't expect it to be so difficult. We used to make traditional sandblasting and dust removal systems, and robots are considered intelligent equipment, which is considered cross-border research and development. We have to learn everything from scratch." Wu Huage said that robots need to work in an environment where sand and dust are splashing, and have high requirements for steel materials; sandblasting pressure, the distance between the nozzle and the workpiece, and the accurate sandblasting angle will directly affect the roughness and cleanliness of the workpiece surface, and the precision requirements are also very high.

"The market is cruel. Only if our products and technologies are ahead of our peers can we survive." Wu Huage said.

Before the finished product was launched, the 8-axis sandblasting robot had been iterated for 5 generations, with a total investment cost of more than 6 million yuan.

After 6 years of research and development, the sandblasting robot finally came out, and the price was 2/3 lower than similar foreign products.

Sanjiang Boli currently has a research and development team of more than 20 people, and will still invest more than 20% of its total revenue in the research and development and design of new products every year. Wu Huage said: "In the next three years, we want to try to use AI big models to empower sandblasting robots, hoping to make breakthroughs in technology and develop products with more diverse functions and higher degree of automation."