What industries use the MagTrack robotic crawler?

The MagTrack robotic crawler is used across petrochemical, energy, marine, offshore, and general industrial maintenance sectors. Any industry that relies on large steel structures, storage tanks, ship hulls, pressure vessels, or offshore platforms, benefits directly from this technology. The sections below break down exactly which operations gain the most, and why.

Which sectors benefit most from robotic crawler technology?

The sectors that benefit most from robotic crawler technology are petrochemical, marine, offshore oil and gas, power generation, and heavy industrial manufacturing. These industries share a common challenge: large steel surfaces that require regular cleaning, surface preparation, or inspection under conditions that are hazardous or physically demanding for human operators.

Each of these sectors works with steel assets that degrade over time through corrosion, fouling, and coating breakdown. Robotic crawlers address this directly by automating the most repetitive and dangerous parts of the maintenance cycle. Here is how the benefits break down by sector:

• Petrochemical: Storage tanks, reactors, and pipework require frequent cleaning and recoating. Robotic crawlers handle closed waterblasting inside tanks, eliminating the need to send workers into confined spaces.
• Marine and shipbuilding: Ship hulls accumulate biofouling and corroded coatings. Crawlers clean and prepare hull surfaces far faster than manual teams, and they work on both flat and curved sections.
• Offshore oil and gas: Platforms and rigs operate in corrosive salt environments. Compact crawler models are designed to transport easily and work in tight offshore spaces.
• Power generation: Boiler walls, heat exchangers, and structural steelwork all need periodic surface preparation before protective coatings can be reapplied.
• General industrial maintenance: Cargo holds, wind girders, and large fabricated structures benefit from the flexibility of modular tooling that adapts to different cleaning and blasting tasks.

What unites all these sectors is the combination of scale, surface type, and safety pressure. When a structure is large, made of steel, and located in a hazardous environment, a robotic crawler delivers measurable advantages over manual methods.

How does the MagTrack work on curved and vertical surfaces?

The MagTrack uses powerful permanent magnets to adhere to steel surfaces, allowing it to drive on vertical walls, overhead sections, and curved geometries without losing grip. The magnetic force is adjustable, and the crawler’s wheel configuration is engineered to maintain traction even as the surface angle changes. The Curved Blast Can attachment extends this capability to surfaces with a radius of up to 3 meters “approximately 9.8 feet”.

This is a critical design feature for real-world industrial environments, where surfaces are rarely perfectly flat. A storage tank, for example, has a cylindrical body, a curved roof, and structural elements like wind girders. A ship hull transitions between flat bottom sections and tightly curved bilge areas. The MagTrack system handles all of these without requiring the crawler to be repositioned manually between each geometry change.

The height-adjustable magnet on the MagTrack Mini adds another layer of adaptability. By raising or lowering the magnetic assembly, operators can tune the grip force to match the surface curvature and the tool being used. The omni-wheel rear support provides additional stability when the crawler is navigating transitions between flat and curved sections. The result is consistent cleaning path coverage, 180 mm “approximately 7 inches” per pass on the Mini, regardless of whether the surface is horizontal, vertical, or somewhere in between.

What surface preparation tasks can a robotic crawler handle?

A robotic crawler like the MagTrack can handle waterblasting, abrasive blasting, vacuum blasting, surface inspection, waterjet cutting, and cargo hold cleaning. The modular design means the same carrier unit can be fitted with different tool heads depending on the task, covering the full range of surface preparation work from paint removal to roughness profiling.

The specific tasks supported by the MagTrack system include:

• Closed waterblasting: The Blast Can and Curved Blast Can use a vacuum dome to contain water and debris during high-pressure jetting, operating at pressures from 500 to 3000 bar “approximately 7,250 to 43,500 PSI”. The surface is left clean and dry, ready for immediate coating.
• Open waterblasting and washing: The Swing Arm attachment allows open jetting for general industrial cleaning and washing tasks where debris containment is not required.
• Abrasive blasting: The Sandblaster Swing Arm supports one, two, or three abrasive nozzles. Height, angle, and pitch are all adjustable to achieve consistent overlap and the correct surface profile for coating adhesion.
• Vacuum blasting: The ReCycleBlaster attachment performs closed-circuit sandblasting, recycling abrasive material and containing airborne particles. This is the right choice when environmental regulations restrict the release of dust or spent abrasive.
• Inspection: The crawler can be equipped for inspection passes, allowing remote visual assessment of steel surfaces without putting operators at risk.
• Waterjet cutting: High-pressure water tools can be used for precision cutting applications on steel structures.

The practical implication is that a single MagTrack carrier can move through an entire maintenance cycle on a steel asset, cleaning, preparing, and inspecting, by swapping tool heads rather than deploying separate pieces of equipment.

Why do petrochemical plants use robotic crawlers for tank cleaning?

Petrochemical plants use robotic crawlers for tank cleaning primarily to eliminate the need for workers to enter confined spaces during the most hazardous phases of the operation. Storage tanks in petrochemical facilities contain residues of flammable, toxic, or chemically aggressive substances. Sending a crawler in first, or using it to complete the bulk of the cleaning work, dramatically reduces human exposure to those risks.

Beyond safety, the economics are compelling. Manual tank cleaning is slow, labour-intensive, and generates large volumes of contaminated wastewater and debris that must be managed carefully. The MagTrack Blast Can operates as a closed system: the vacuum dome captures both water and debris at the point of contact, so nothing escapes into the tank environment. This simplifies waste handling and reduces the volume of material that needs to be processed after the job.

For storage tanks specifically, the Swing Arm attachment also proves its value on structural elements like wind girders, the horizontal ring stiffeners that run around the outside of a tank shell. These are awkward to clean manually but are well within the reach of a crawler-mounted arm that adjusts distance from the cleaning head while driving.

The ATEX Zone 2 certification available on the MagTrack Mini is directly relevant here. Petrochemical environments frequently fall within explosive atmosphere classifications, and equipment operating in those zones must meet certified standards. An ATEX-rated crawler can be deployed in these areas where non-certified equipment cannot.

How does robotic water jetting improve safety in marine environments?

Robotic water jetting improves safety in marine environments by removing operators from the most dangerous positions during hull cleaning and surface preparation: working at height, over water, or inside confined cargo holds. The crawler takes on the physical risk while the operator controls the system remotely from a safe distance.

Safety in high-pressure water jetting is governed by well-established standards. In Europe, the EWJI (European Waterjet Industry) sets industry-wide guidelines. In the Netherlands, SIR (Stichting Industriële Reiniging) provides certification and oversight. In the UK, the WJA (Water Jetting Association) publishes codes of practice, while in Germany, DIRV (Deutscher Industrieverband Reinigen und Vakuumieren) covers industrial cleaning standards. In the USA, the WJTA (WaterJet Technology Association) leads safety guidance. All of these organisations recognise that reducing direct operator exposure to high-pressure water jets is a primary safety objective, and robotic crawlers are one of the most effective ways to achieve it.

In marine environments, the additional hazards include working on sloped or wet hull surfaces, operating near water, and dealing with the physical demands of managing high-pressure hoses and lances manually. The MagTrack Mini, with its compact form factor and remote controller, was specifically designed with offshore oil rigs and ship maintenance in mind. Its lightweight build makes it easy to transport to the work site, and its magnetic adhesion means it stays on the hull without requiring workers to physically support it during operation.

The closed waterblasting capability also matters for marine work. Ship hulls often carry antifouling coatings that contain regulated substances. Collecting the blasted material at source, rather than allowing it to wash into the surrounding water, is both an environmental and a regulatory requirement in most ports and shipyards.

When should an operation use a robotic crawler instead of manual jetting?

An operation should use a robotic crawler instead of manual jetting when the surface is large and repetitive, the environment is hazardous, the required pressure exceeds safe manual handling limits, or when the job demands a consistently dry and clean result that manual methods struggle to deliver reliably. These conditions frequently occur together in industrial tank cleaning, hull preparation, and offshore maintenance.

More specifically, consider a robotic crawler when:

• The surface area is large enough that manual jetting would require multiple operator shifts to complete, introducing fatigue-related risk.
• The environment is classified as a confined space, explosive atmosphere, or otherwise restricted for extended human presence.
• The operating pressure is in the range of 500 to 3000 bar “approximately 7,250 to 43,500 PSI”. At the higher end of this range, manual lancing becomes physically demanding and increases the risk of operator injury from reaction forces.
• The surface preparation specification requires a clean, dry result immediately after blasting, as the closed Blast Can system achieves this consistently while open manual jetting does not.
• Environmental regulations require debris and wastewater containment at the point of generation.
• The surface geometry is vertical or overhead, where manual work requires scaffolding, rope access, or elevated work platforms, all of which add cost and risk.

Manual jetting remains appropriate for smaller, irregular, or access-restricted areas where a crawler cannot physically fit or where the setup time for robotic equipment would exceed the time saved. The MagTrack Mini addresses the size constraint directly: its compact 2-wheel-drive design fits into spaces where the larger 4-wheel carrier cannot go. But for the bulk of large-scale industrial surface preparation, the case for robotic jetting over manual methods is clear: faster throughput, lower operator risk, and more consistent results.

How MagTrack helps with robotic industrial cleaning

We developed the MagTrack robotic crawler system to address exactly the challenges described throughout this article. Here is what the system delivers in practice:

• Modular tooling: One universal carrier, multiple tool heads: Blast Can, Curved Blast Can, Swing Arm, Sandblaster Swing Arm, and ReCycleBlaster, covering the full range of cleaning and surface preparation tasks.
• High-pressure capability: All water jetting tools operate at pressures from 500 to 3000 bar “approximately 7,250 to 43,500 PSI”, suited to the most demanding industrial applications.
• Surface flexibility: Magnetic adhesion and adjustable height settings allow the crawler to work on flat, curved, vertical, and overhead steel surfaces.
• Closed-system cleaning: The Blast Can and ReCycleBlaster collect water, debris, and abrasive at source, leaving a clean, dry surface ready for immediate coating.
• ATEX Zone 2 certification: Available on the MagTrack Mini for deployment in explosive atmosphere environments.
• Remote operation: Full remote control keeps operators away from high-pressure zones and hazardous environments throughout the job.
• Compact option: The MagTrack Mini is lightweight and easy to transport, designed for offshore rigs, shipyards, and confined industrial spaces.

If you are evaluating robotic cleaning solutions for your next project, we are ready to discuss your specific requirements. Contact our team to find out which MagTrack configuration fits your application.