The first in China! This sandblasting robot that fills the gap in the industry is put into use in Zhuhai

On June 6, CNOOC announced that the first independently developed 12-axis overhead crane-type special sandblasting robot in the domestic offshore oil and gas equipment manufacturing industry was put into use at the Zhuhai Deepwater Marine Equipment Manufacturing Base in Guangdong, filling the technical gap of "intelligent coating" in the industry, marking the intelligent upgrading and transformation of traditional sandblasting technology. The new robot operation mode not only reduces 70% of the time compared with manual operation, but also effectively improves the harsh working environment and reduces the incidence of occupational diseases.

Construction workers operate the sandblasting robot.

Sandblasting technology is an indispensable part of the manufacturing process of offshore oil and gas equipment. Traditional sandblasting requires workers to hold the spray gun and constantly move and adjust the spray gun angle to operate. More than 95% of the sandblasting work in the industry is done manually, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive and prone to fatigue and errors. Therefore, improving the efficiency of sandblasting and improving the complex working environment of construction workers have become urgent problems to be solved.

The sandblasting robot put into use this time has three control modes: motion trajectory programming, offline programming and remote control operation. It is simple to operate, highly practical, and can achieve highly flexible operation. It is not only suitable for automatic sandblasting of batch standard parts, but also compatible with remote control sandblasting of non-standard pipelines, steps and stray parts. Under the same workload, the operation time of the sandblasting robot is reduced by 70%, the production efficiency is improved, and the annual carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by 323 tons.

The picture shows the welding of the main structure rail of the sandblasting robot.

According to Wang Xin, the project leader, "The automatic sandblasting robot is developed based on general robot technology. After repeated investigations on the industry application, the project team proposed an innovative solution combining body cable integration, 12-axis crane-style movement, and positive pressure environment with robots to address the problems of robot body fragility, unsuitability of large workpieces, and insufficient dust prevention technology for structures and joints."

The application of robot technology to automatic surface sandblasting can effectively improve the harsh working environment, protect the occupational health of employees, reduce the damage of dust and flying sand in the original workplace to the human body, and reduce the incidence of occupational diseases. In addition, workers operate the robot at close range through the control screen, observe the sandblasting quality of the workpiece in time, and feedback the correct operation when the robot makes an adverse reaction, so as to achieve the effect of "human-machine collaboration" and achieve excellent performance in continuous operation time, accuracy, and sandblasting quality.

In the next step, the project team will optimize and upgrade the development of multiple work scenarios and the design of special tooling to accelerate the upgrade and iteration of special sandblasting robots in the domestic offshore oil and gas equipment manufacturing industry.