In traditional shipyards, workers responsible for rust removal and painting often hang at heights of dozens of meters, completing their tasks amid the smell of paint and iron dust. Today, however, intelligent high-altitude equipment is gradually taking over these high-risk and high-intensity processes. Every year, over ten thousand ships worldwide require maintenance and repair. Traditional manual rust removal and painting are inefficient, highly polluting, and risky. Coupled with the labor shortage and increasingly strict environmental regulations, the ship repair and construction industry is accelerating its transformation towards intelligence. 
Zoomlion's intelligent high-reach machinery has delved into the frontline scenarios of shipyards, establishing an intelligent operation system that ranges from specialized high-altitude work platforms to intelligent rust removal and intelligent spray painting robots, promoting the transformation of ship repair and construction from "sea of people tactics" to "human-machine collaboration".
The intelligent transformation of shipbuilding and repair, from aerial work platforms to intelligent systems
Against the backdrop of the continuous upgrading of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) energy efficiency and carbon emission regulations, shipowners are setting higher standards for repair and construction quality, environmental performance and construction efficiency. At the same time, shipyards are generally confronted with the difficulty of recruiting workers for high-altitude positions and a high staff turnover rate. The traditional manual mode is no longer sustainable.
Zoomlion's intelligent high-reach machinery is no longer confined to the equipment logic of "lifting people to heights", but instead builds a systematic solution centered on "completing professional tasks at heights" - high-reach machinery has been upgraded from an auxiliary tool to a core productivity unit and has become an important component of the intelligent construction and maintenance system.
Specialized equipment systems for shipyards, covering the entire process from high-altitude work, rust removal to painting.
Zoomlion's intelligent high-reach machinery has built a product matrix of "professional aerial work platforms + intelligent rust removal robots + intelligent painting robots" around the core operation links of ship repair and construction, forming a full-process operation capability from the exterior of the hull to the interior of the bottom, and from surface treatment to coating protection.
These three types of equipment can be deployed independently to meet the single-link operation requirements of shipyards; they can also be coordinated and scheduled through an Internet of Things platform to form digital repair and manufacturing units, achieving the streamlining and parallelization of rust removal, spraying, and high-altitude operations, providing shipyards with a combinable and scalable intelligent upgrade path.
The shipyard environment is constantly exposed to complex conditions such as salt fog corrosion, metal dust, high humidity and vibration, which poses strict requirements for the reliability of equipment.
The ZT28S and ZT40S series have been specially reinforced for shipyard working conditions from the design stage.
The combination of a reinforced chassis structure and solid tires enhances the vehicle's ground clearance and passage ability on steel plates.
Fully enclosed steel casing, with IP54 protection grade, effectively blocks salt spray, dust and welding slag.
The shipyard-level dual-stage air filtration and multi-level fuel filtration system ensures the stable operation of the power system.
Built-in hydraulic tubing and cable layout reduces the risk of snagging and corrosion.
The key moving parts are equipped with dust covers to extend the maintenance cycle.
Through scene-driven system design, the equipment maintains high reliability and extends the mean time between failures in complex environments, providing a solid support for future unmanned operations.
Rust Removal Revolution: Dust-Free Breakthrough of Ultra-High Pressure Water Jet Technology
The dust concentration of traditional sandblasting for rust removal is high, and the pollution diffusion is difficult to control, which has continuously increased the pressure on occupational health and environmental protection.
