Surface Prep Today
Mill scale, rust, and other contaminants make surface preparation essential before welding or painting structural steel, but today's surface prep methods each carry significant drawbacks that drive up costs, slow production, and create hazardous working conditions:
Labor-Intensive Manual Methods
Grinding and needlegunning are demanding, labor-intensive, processes which bottleneck key tasks like welding.
Inconsistent Surface Quality
Hand-held tooling produces variable results. Inconsistent surface preparation may lead to rework or coating failures.
Health and Safety Hazards
Abrasive blasting, needlegunning, and grinding generate dust which is hazardous to workers and requires containment or filtration.
Shotblasting Process Complexity
Automated shotblasting is only possible with compatible geometries and requires processing each part through a dedicated blasting area.
Our Approach
Mobile Factory Robot
Our robot moves around the fabrication shop floor, navigating around workpieces with any geometry rather than requiring steel to be fed through a fixed machine..
High-Power Laser Cleaning
The robot's laser removes rust, mill scale, and other contaminants to prepare surface to specificed standards (SSPC or other).
What Sets Us Apart
Flexible, Not Fixed
Unlike shotblast lines that require steel to conform to the machine, our robot conforms to the steel. It handles beams, plates, channels, angles, and complex weldments — adapting to whatever the shop is fabricating that day.
Autonomous Operation
The robot works with minimal human oversight, freeing skilled workers for higher-value tasks. It navigates the shop floor, identifies surfaces selected for preparation, and executes cleaning paths automatically while documenting surface prep quality.
The Impact
Consistent, Repeatable Quality
Laser ablation delivers uniform surface profiles every time resulting in better coating adhesion, fewer rejects, and reduced rework.
Automated Compliance Documentation
Our robots uses AI to analyze surface profiles and automatically create a record validating surface preparation quality.
Higher Throughput
Finishing surface prep autonomously ahead of welding or painting removes an operational step, increasing throughput as robots work 24/7 to prepare surfaces as needed.
No Hazardous Waste
Automated laser cleaning eliminates the need for complex respiratory protection, media cleanup, and containment/filtration necessitated by other surface preparation approaches.
