Paint Removal of Airplane & Water Jet Application

Abstract

The paint removal and recoating are the very important process in airplane maintenance. The traditional technology is to use the chemical way corroding the paint with paint remover. For changing the defects, corrosion & pollution & manual working, of the traditional technology, the physical process which removes the paint of airplane with 250MPa/250kW ultra-high pressure rotary water jetting though the surface cleaner installed on the six axes robot is studied. The paint layer of airplane is very thin and close. The contradiction of water jetting paint removal is to remove the paint layer wholly and not damage the surface of airplane. In order to solve the contradiction, the best working condition must be reached through tests. The paint removal efficiency with ultra-high pressure and move speed of not damaged to the surface. The move speed of this test is about 2m/min, and the paint removal efficiency is about 30~40m2 /h, and the paint removal active area is 85-90%. No-repeat and no-omit are the base requests of the robot program. The physical paint removal tec hnology will be applied in airplane maintenance, and will face the safety detection of application permission.