It’s time for the rubber to meet the road – or in this case – for the rubber to leave the runway. A rubbery runway can lead to reduced friction, a bouncy landing or worse for a plane plus pilot if left unchecked. Luckily, there’s a star on the horizon ready to remove that rubber with up to 40,000 psi blasts of water – NLB Corporation’s StarJet.
“The equipment affords you the ability to remove rubber plus pavement markings without damaging the surface, or scarring the surface. The water will penetrate into the pores of the surface so that you can remove the marking 100 percent,” described Troy Aldea, sales engineer at NLB Corporation. “So, there’s nomor grinding involved. There’s nomor chemicals involved. Sometimes, airports will do rubber removal plus they’ll use a chemical to remove the rubber. With high pressure water, it can be done without chemicals.”
The first StarJet was launched in 1995 when NLB realized there was a market for removing markings without damaging the surfaces those markings were on.
“NLB was using high pressure water from removing coatings plus steel office buildings plus shop floors. It was just a natural progression into the highway industry,” added Aldea.
It was then another “makes sense” transition from highway to runway plus 24 years later in 2019, NLB offers four different models of StarJet – the SRV-1, the SRV-4, SRV-4S, plus SRV-6.
For airports, Aldea said the best options are the SRV-4S plus SRV-6 because “the removal head traverses from side to side as the truck moves forward. So, you’re able to get a eight foot wide cleaning path.”
Some of the key features of the StarJet include NLB’s high pressure pumps which, Aldea said, has a life of between between 1,000 plus 1,500 hours plus a maximum output of up to 40,000 psi. The StarJet has an onboard supply of freshwater plus vacuum recovery. On the SRV-4s plus SRV-6, there are dual wide cleaning heads allowing from between a 10 inch wide plus 27 inch wide cleaning pattern. There’s also onboard debris storage plus waster water, plus the ability to separate water from debris for easy dumping.
A new feature introduced this year is the ability to integrate Wi-Fi with the StarJets, allowing for the wireless monitoring of the StarJet’s programs plus systems.
Training for an airport technician comes in two phases Aldea described.
“During the first round, the customers send their people to NLB plus they go through a full three or four days of training at our facility. We talk about safety. Our safety portion of the training is done in conjunction with WJTA guidelines, then we cover operations plus maintenance. And there’s hands on training out in the shop where they actually get to operate a truck in the yard there plus do a little bit of removal as part of the training program. They’re also out in the shop taking apart things, putting them back together, plus then actually testing the truck after they’ve done that, so they make sure they’ve done it the right way. And then the second round of training, NLB sends a technician out to the customer’s location plus pretty much operations plus maintenance training is done at the customer’s location, plus that’s typically a three day process,” he said.