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Lindsey Elliott is big into bolts. At last year\u2019s Bolting Symposium \u2014 the 13th annual \u2014 she said the highlight was playing \u201cBolting Bingo\u201d against the many self-proclaimed \u201ctorque dorks\u201d who were in the room. <\/p>\n
A former engineer and planner at ExxonMobil, Elliott has spent years thinking about how to improve the infrastructure that moves oil, gas, and petrochemicals. Bolts are what she landed on. Specifically, the bolts that connect sections of pipe (technically called \u201cbolted flange joints\u201d). These bolts require hard, physical work to loosen and tighten, and are the source of many pipefitters\u2019 injuries. Like many trade industries, there\u2019s also a labor shortage. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose people get really tired when they\u2019re asked to work 12 hours a day for three months in a row,\u201d she told TechCrunch. \u201cI\u2019ve talked to pipefitters across the U.S. across Canada, and just repeatedly have been told North American pipefitting productivity is notoriously low.\u201d <\/p>\n
The solution Elliott came up with at her startup Nexterity, which is one of the Startup Battlefield 200 selected to participate in TechCrunch Disrupt, is a remote-controlled robot that can handle this part of the job. It\u2019s the kind of idea that could fundamentally change this particular blue collar job if widely adopted, making the workers safer and more productive. <\/p>\n
Think: more dork, less torque.<\/p>\n
The robot comes in two main pieces that fit around a pipe. Powered by batteries, the robot can slide across the pipe once it\u2019s attached and quickly loosen and tighten four bolts at a time. <\/p>\n
Elliott said Nexterity has developed a few different configurations of the robot to fit different standard pipe sizes, but they\u2019re all small enough to fit in a Pelican case and be carried by a single worker. That makes them easy to deploy to new sites \u2014 flexibility that is crucial to Nexterity\u2019s business model of treating the robot like rental construction equipment.<\/p>\n
Elliott said she arrived at this particular design as a result of conversations she\u2019s had over the last few years \u2014 not just at the Bolting Symposium, but also with members of the Pressure Vessels & Piping Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I learned from the people, the torque dorks per se,\u201d she said, \u201cis that 80% of our pipes are between two to eight inches in diameter, or what they call NPS2 to NPS8. And so when you have that much repeatability, you have a fantastic candidate for automation.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a pretty straightforward idea, but one that Elliott believes has a lot of upside. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it would shock a lot of people just how big this market is,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, day to day, most of us don\u2019t think about piping infrastructure, but even water, wastewater, water treatment, food and beverage, mining, nuclear, any kind of green and sustainable manufacturing facility \u2014 they all use the same kind of piping.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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