Today, Leapion will introduce the differences between continuous and pulsed laser, and the most common laser cleaning applications.

A Strong and Short Power Burst Means Faster Removal

    You can think of laser ablation as similar to carving stone with a hammer and a chisel. You can use a small hammer and do many small hits on your chisel. Or, you could just as well use a bigger hammer to leverage more power, hence reducing the required number of hits and increasing the removal speed. The idea is the same with laser cleaning, except that you only want to remove a layer of material: the contaminant.

    Fiber laser cleaning systems can remove any given layer using two different methods. Either the laser beam is a continuous wave of light, or it is pulsed at a given repetition rate. Even if the result is pretty much the same, the removal speed varies a lot according to the method.

Removal Speed: Continuous vs. Pulsed Lasers

Graph - relation of laser beam's power to removal speed

     For a given surface area, putting the same energy within a short pulse increases the power. It’s like using the bigger hammer. A pulsed laser beam is more efficient and provides a faster removal speed than a continuous beam. And while short laser pulses clean surfaces faster, they also ensure that the underlying material does not heat up too much.

It is Consumable-Free and Environmentally Friendly

    As this cleaning method only uses a laser beam to vaporize the layer to be removed, there are literally no consumables with it. This is the beauty of lasers, which only need a power plug to be set and ready to go.

    On top of this, lasers use no chemical products or solvents. This makes laser surface cleaning one of the safest solutions when it comes to rust and coating removal. Not only is there no chemical waste to take care of, but employees are totally safe when working near laser cleaning machines, which are designed to meet international laser safety standards. Employees won't need personal protective equipment and won't have to handle those pesky chemicals.

    That being said, since laser cleaning vaporizes materials into fumes, you should have a fume extraction system near the laser to ensure that no paint, oil or dust particles are released into the air.

Laser Cleaning is of Interest for Various Industrial Applications

     

    Removing the burnt rubber residue from tire molds; giving a new life to old pipelines; cleaning pipes in nuclear power plants; and even larger projects such as removing paint from a rusty bridge and preparing welding surfaces are all projects that can benefit from industrial laser cleaning.

    This non-contact cleaning technique can be used in countless industrial applications. The only limit is the capacity to discriminate between the material to be removed and the one to be protected.

At the moment, the most common laser cleaning applications include:

• Welding pre-treatments to remove rust and other contaminants from welding areas

• Welding post-treatments to remove aluminum and stainless-steel oxides

• Laser surface preparation to maximize paint adhesion

• Laser oxide removal from specialty alloy ingots

• Coating removal just after the coating process to replace part masking in production lines

• Depainting parts that would otherwise be scrapped due to paint defects

• Laser ablation is not only used for cleaning, it's also widely used for other industrial applications.

    In a word, laser cleaning solutions can overcome many of the problems faced with rust removal and other industrial cleaning applications. By selecting a specific material to be removed, fiber lasers offer a fast, as well as a set-and-forget solution for many industries.

    If you are interested in the laser cleaning process, contact a Leapion expert. We can guide you through our workstations, production line solutions and laser systems.

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