Construction and Engineering Design

Why It Works

The typhoon or cyclone provided the basic model for the design of the netcleaner head. If you have a rotating current of water or air moving across the face of the earth or ocean; a low pressure area of intense suction is created in the "center" or "eye" strong enough to pick up houses or boats.
This "venturi" principle is used by the netcleaner head to simultaneously project intense water pressure
onto the fouled net from around the circumference of the netcleaner head while maintaining a suction force in the center of the head.

In the netcleaner a high-pressure power pack feeds sea water to angled water jets around the periphery of a rotating disk on the cleaning face of the head. The disk begins to revolve and simultaneously push out a cylindrical column of water. A vacuum is then created in the middle of the head and this results in the head clinging on to the net it is cleaning rather than pushing the net away.

A picture of the intense water column projected from the cleaning face.

This picture of the old model with a 30cm dia. head illustrates the intense water column projected from the cleaning face. The new generation Netcleaner II is a marked improvement on the old model. It features a much larger cleaning head of 50cm dia. yet weighs only about the same as the old head. In addition, it is powered by a 18hp power pack rather than 11hp. Together these improvements more than double its cleaning capability.

How It's Made

The construction of the Netcleaner II head is different from the original one. The face in contact with the net is made in hard wearing stainless steel, and the aft part of the disc is formed from carbon graphite fibre and the inside is polyurethane foam.

The over-all result is a durable, light weight, corrosion proof unit of neutral buoyancy.