Painting a helicopter blade is one of the most complex operations in the aeronautical industry.
Being a rotary wing, this phase requires a meticulous sequence of activities to ensure perfect weight balance. Painting, therefore, not only has an aesthetic and protective function, but also directly affects the balance of the blade.
To guarantee an optimal result, the system has been designed to eliminate any manual handling and to control, through a specific ‘recipe’, all twenty-seven phases that make up the blade painting cycle. Once the “recipe” has been set from one of the pulpits of the electrical system, the shovel – docked in the loading station – automatically reaches all the operating stations dedicated to the various treatments.
The polymerisation of the paint, perhaps one of the most delicate of the entire process, takes place in a “revolver” type oven located between two painting booths. Here, the blades, uniquely identified by the serial number affixed on the scale, are automatically transported from each of the two booths to the oven-revolver and undergo the curing process according to pre-established times and temperatures, before being automatically ejected and sent to the last processing steps before storage.