The aircraft repainting process uses harmful chemicals that damage the environment and human health. Peter Boeijink, president and CEO of Xyrec, said he saw employees stripping paint off an aircraft 10 years ago and started working on a solution that was not as harmful to the environment or employees.
Stripping the Paint
Xyrec's Laser Coating Removal Robot eliminates the need for chemicals during the paint stripping process. The technology evaporates and combusts the paint; the paint effluent is immediately vacuumed from the surface and passed through a filtration system. The system features a built-in, closed-loop color recognition and control system, which allows it to strip metal and composite surfaces. A single operator can control the robot from a separate room.
“We selected a laser system so fast that it is faster than the current process,” Boeijink said. “It’s about 50 percent faster than the current process of removing paint from an aircraft,” he continued, adding that the Laser Coating Removal Robot can strip an aircraft in about one to two days, depending on the size.
This technology eliminates the need for one cubic meter of chemicals and 15 cubic meters of fresh water per wide body, according to Boeijink. He said it will allow for the aircraft painting industry to move away from the “ugly process” it’s currently using.
“It’s dripping [chemicals] with the paint to the floor of the hangar. They have to clean it up with a lot of water. They have to clean the aircraft very carefully after that because if there’s anything left it will not paint well. It is terrible work to do also. I mean, there are some chemicals in paint like Chrome 6 is really dangerous to get inside your body,” Boeijink continued.
The Laser Coating Removal Robot reduces CO2 emissions as well.
“The reduction in CO2 from a standard job on a 777 is from more than 40 tons of CO2 to 14 tons of CO2,” he said.
Composite structures in new aircraft design can’t support the use of chemicals and complex primers anymore, which is one reason why Xyrec’s technology is so useful. The Laser Coating Removal Robot allows for the selective removal of layers of paint without damaging the aircraft.
“The aircraft developed in the last 10 years have a lot more composites than classical aircraft,” Boeijink said. “The 787 and the Airbus 350 — their fuselage is composites. Not in every place but 80 percent of fuselage is composites,” he continued, mentioning these composite pieces must be stripped by hand.
Boeijink said some operations put an additional, intermediate coat of paint on the aircraft to be able to use the paint stripping chemicals on composite materials.
“That’s the solution they do,” he said. “I’m not aware that it really works. There’s a lot of disadvantages here. You need an additional layer of paint, which is weight and weight is not a good idea on an aircraft. It costs you a lot of money.”
Boeijink mentioned this strategy is risky because employees must apply the chemicals to the composites not knowing if there will be damage.
“You apply the chemicals and then you wait a day and then you have to wait and see where there is damage or not. The uncertainty you don’t really like,” he said.
Repainting the Aircraft
Xyrec developed the Laser Coating Removal Robot concept between 2010 and 2014 and built it between 2015 and 2021. Shortly after, in 2014, the company invented the Automated Paint Robot to paint aircraft more quickly and efficiently.
Boejink noted more airlines want to do decoration with more colors and intricate logos, but it takes time airlines don’t have. This technology, which functions like a massive inkjet printer, will make more extravagant decoration possible.
“All aircraft are becoming more and more decorated. You see aircraft in only two or three colors like big carriers in the U.S. or big carriers in Europe. And you see other companies like Alaska Air that has decorations on the aircraft,” he said, mentioning some airlines use their planes for marketing purposes as well.
The Automated Paint Robot can clean, sand and paint an aircraft. The technology uses seven colors to create a variety of designs on an aircraft.
“The system uses six colors to cover 95 percent of all Pantone colors and the color white adds the possibility to print on non-white surfaces like logos on military aircraft,” Boeijink said. “We can reduce the painting of an aircraft [and] add new decoration on an aircraft in three days,” he noted. Aircraft typically take one to two weeks to be repainted with current processes.
“It doesn’t matter to us what decoration it is — how many colors — it’s completely unimportant. Friday evening your Boeing 777 is in the hangar and Monday morning it’s completely redecorated.”
Range of Aircraft
Boeijink said the Automated Paint Robot and Laser Coating Removal Robot can be used on all range of aircraft.
“The design is based on the very simple idea, we should be able to deliver this process to all the aircraft in the world,” he noted. “That means we have robots for fighter jets and we have robots for the largest cargo planes and passenger planes. The robots are the same but only different in size because a fighter jet is placed in a smaller hangar so we need a robot fitting into a smaller hangar. The robot itself is the same. They have the same technology, the same architecture, the same software. There’s no functional change at all. The only thing we change is the size of a key element of the robot is its mast. On the mast you have an arm and the arm is actually reaching towards the aircraft. So when you look at that we only change the size of the mast and the arm to fit into the hangar.”
Xyrec expects to deliver this technology to its first customer in the next couple of months.
