Nexterity wants to automate the hard, dangerous part of pipefitting

Lindsey Elliott is large into bolts. At past year’s Bolting Symposium — the 13th yearly — she said the item was playing “Bolting Bingo” against the galore self-proclaimed “torque dorks” who were successful the room.

A erstwhile technologist and planner astatine ExxonMobil, Elliott has spent years reasoning astir however to amended the infrastructure that moves oil, gas, and petrochemicals. Bolts are what she landed on. Specifically, the bolts that link sections of tube (technically called “bolted flange joints”). These bolts necessitate hard, carnal enactment to loosen and tighten, and are the root of galore pipefitters’ injuries. Like galore commercialized industries, there’s besides a labour shortage.

“Those radical get truly bushed erstwhile they’re asked to enactment 12 hours a time for 3 months successful a row,” she told TechCrunch. “I’ve talked to pipefitters crossed the U.S. crossed Canada, and conscionable repeatedly person been told North American pipefitting productivity is notoriously low.”

The solution Elliott came up with astatine her startup Nexterity, which is 1 of the Startup Battlefield 200 selected to enactment successful TechCrunch Disrupt, is simply a remote-controlled robot that tin grip this portion of the job. It’s the benignant of thought that could fundamentally alteration this peculiar bluish collar occupation if wide adopted, making the workers safer and much productive.

Think: much dork, little torque.

The robot comes successful 2 main pieces that acceptable astir a pipe. Powered by batteries, the robot tin descent crossed the tube erstwhile it’s attached and rapidly loosen and tighten 4 bolts astatine a time.

Elliott said Nexterity has developed a fewer antithetic configurations of the robot to acceptable antithetic modular tube sizes, but they’re each tiny capable to acceptable successful a Pelican lawsuit and beryllium carried by a azygous worker. That makes them casual to deploy to caller sites — flexibility that is important to Nexterity’s concern exemplary of treating the robot similar rental operation equipment.

Elliott said she arrived astatine this peculiar plan arsenic a effect of conversations she’s had implicit the past fewer years — not conscionable astatine the Bolting Symposium, but besides with members of the Pressure Vessels & Piping Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“What I learned from the people, the torque dorks per se,” she said, “is that 80% of our pipes are betwixt 2 to 8 inches successful diameter, oregon what they telephone NPS2 to NPS8. And truthful erstwhile you person that overmuch repeatability, you person a fantastic campaigner for automation.”

It’s a beauteous straightforward idea, but 1 that Elliott believes has a batch of upside.

“I deliberation it would daze a batch of radical conscionable however large this marketplace is,” she said. “I mean, time to day, astir of america don’t deliberation astir piping infrastructure, but adjacent water, wastewater, h2o treatment, nutrient and beverage, mining, nuclear, immoderate benignant of greenish and sustainable manufacturing installation — they each usage the aforesaid benignant of piping.”