To bring a revolution in the coating industry, Qlayers, a TU Delft startup, has raised an initial capital of €300,000 from UNIIQ. The investment was announced by the Delft alderman, Bas Vollebregt, during the Metropolitan Region Rotterdam The Hague event 2018. The seed money will enable Qlayers to develop a printhead for coating large, industrial surfaces such as oil and gas terminals, ships, bridges and windmills. Notably, Qlayers was founded in 2017 by TU Delft engineers – Ruben Geutjens and Josefien Groot.
This technological initiative by Qlayers is enabling the users to apply coatings fully automatically and in a controlled manner, without the application of mist paint. As of now, there is no system in the market that can automatically apply paint without creating harmful mist. The coating of large industrial objects (such as storage tanks, wind turbines and aircraft) is still majorly done by hand, with brushes, rollers and spray equipment. Further, the current coating process is regarded as extremely chemical, energy-intensive, unsafe and inefficient, both in production and during repair.
Below mentioned are the three things that speak volumes about Qlayers’ innovative coating technology:
Cost and labour-effective
Up to 50% of the paint can be lost in the environment during the spraying operation. Involving manpower also makes it an accident vulnerable process due to the involvement of ladders and scaffolding. The innovative coating technology by Qlayers helps save a lot of manpower and paint.
Environment-friendly
Applying a resistance-reducing coating on a ship or aircraft ensures that less fuel is used and therefore, less CO2 is released. Unlike the conventional coating processes that take a heavy toll on the environment, the solution by Qlayers is the least polluting and hazardous to the environment as it can be applied in a controlled environment.
Smoother and quicker process
With the development of the Slash100, Qlayers uses a printhead with which paint can be applied to a surface without losing it to the environment. The process of coating is automatic and controlled, and less supervision is needed. Further, the coating applied through the innovative technology is smoother and efficient.
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