#1851: SkinThinner

Many industries rely on being able to abrade or erode large areas of material in order to prepare for coating or to reduce weight by thinning.

Today’s invention is a small robot device consisting of a mobile milling head on the outside of a skin or bulkhead and a mobile ultrasound sensor, moving in step with it, on the other side.

This would allow material to be removed in an automated but controlled way so that the sensor could determine the remaining local thickness and instruct the mill head when to move to the next target area.

There would also be a narrow vacuum hose to remove the abraded particles.