Robotic Hull Cleaning 55-60 ft

The keelcrab drone is capable of cleaning (once easily mastered in piloting operations) up to the95/97% of the surface area of a displacement hull of a sailboat in the 10/24 meter range and 85/87% of a planing or semi-planing hull of a motorboat in the 10/ 24 meter range.

Even with the stainless inset brush, the keelcrab drone is unable to remove barnacles or dog teeth or fouling that can be classified as aggressive or highly entrenched. First, the reasons why these pluricellulars proliferate on the hull of your boat are basically to be attributed to a mixture of factors such as the particularity of the water in your catchment area (mix of fresh and salt water or the presence in the immediate vicinity of fish farms) an incorrect technical choice of antifouling chemical protective of your hull (or worse, a poorly executed job) or finally the total absence of the chemical protective product (due either to natural consumption or to previous underwater cleaning interventions that were too aggressive and caused a forced removal of the coating). In any case (a general rule from our direct experience) the underwater removal of these pluricellulars is dangerous to the health and physical integrity of your boat because the mechanical abrasion force required for their removal consequent to their great rooting ability, is so high as to compromise with high probability not only the underlying antifouling layer (causing its total removal) but also the underlying gealcot layer causing in the medium possible problems of osmosis manifestation. For these reasons, the philosophy chosen to be developed espouses the logic of “less aggressive but more frequent.”

Our brushes are designed to remove principles ofcoral, vegetation and algae without removing the underlying antifouling, which in numerous tests in a simulated environment finds no micrometric change before or after several passes of the drone. Regular cleaning aimed at bringing the antifouling back into direct contact with the water also prevents the formation of barnacles and “dog teeth” .

Our A.N.C.C.P. certified brushes the result of countless tests on the resulting micrometry (pre and post robot passage) in a simulated environment (with even water analysis) confirms that Keelcrab has the utmost respect for all classified fixed-matrix (i.e., non-water-soluble) silicone (or silicone film) surfaces and antifouling, and indeed its use extends the useful life of the chemical by timely removing the first layers of vegetation andMaintaining direct contact with water.

In the case of even partially water-soluble paints, the first advice is to sail (since the basic chemical self-cleaning principle of these products provides exactly this solution). In case displacement or navigation is not possible, in order to avoid micrometer reduction of antifouling in cases of drone use,use is constrained to the removal of the central brush body, leaving the dual tasks of keeping the robot adhered to the hull and sucking up silt algae or vegetation to the suction capacity alone. The proportion between suction capacity in kg and robot feed ratedemonstrates how using keelcrab without its brush body simulates slow sailing of less than 3.5 knots by stimulating the natural chemical self-cleaning process of paint.