In recent years, the application of laser cutting, welding and precision marking and carving has been rapidly promoted, and the market segments of more than 10 billion yuan have been formed respectively. As a tool, laser manufacturing has gradually found its new functions, and laser cleaning is a new technology in recent years. As early as three or four years ago, it had been hot for a period of time, which was hyped up by individual enterprises, and was highly expected by many industry experts. However, due to the technical and market application reasons, the application of laser cleaning has not been popularized and has not met the expectations of the industry. Gradually, the topic of laser cleaning has been marginalized and seems to have been forgotten.
 

Traditional cleaning includes mechanical friction cleaning, chemical corrosion cleaning, sandblasting impact cleaning, high-frequency ultrasonic cleaning and other processes, but these processes are either inefficient or produce a large amount of waste water and dust, which do not meet the current national requirements for environmental protection and green production. Laser cleaning has the characteristics of no grinding, non-contact, no thermal effect, and is easy to be equipped with dust absorption and purification equipment. It is suitable for cleaning objects of various materials, and is considered to be a reliable and effective solution.

Laser cleaning 's advantages

Laser cleaning is a cleaning method that uses high-frequency high-energy laser pulse to irradiate the workpiece surface. The coating layer can instantly absorb the focused laser energy, generate shock waves, make the oil stain, rust spot or coating on the surface evaporate or peel off, and effectively clean the surface attachment or surface coating at high speed. The laser pulse with short action time will not damage the metal substrate under appropriate parameters. The development of lasers is an important factor to promote the laser cleaning process. At present, high-frequency pulsed fiber lasers and solid-state pulsed lasers are widely used; Secondly, the optical components of laser cleaning head are also very important factors.

When the laser cleaning machine just came out, the rust stains disappeared after the light beam swept through it, just like sweeping the floor with a broom, with high efficiency, so it was considered as black technology. Laser cleaning can be used in a wide range, including metal steel plates, railway locomotives, steel rails, ships, shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing, tire molds, aircraft skins, engineering machinery, electronic manufacturing line parts, petrochemical industry, mining, nuclear power, cultural relics, and so on. Direct application scenarios can be found.

However, at that time, the price of lasers was high, and most of the lasers used stably were below 500w, and the power was also limited. A laser cleaner was more than 600000 yuan, resulting in the market application could not be expanded. We can see that the disadvantages of laser cleaning are that the price is slightly higher, followed by the application of surface treatment. In the case of irregular shaped workpiece, corner, dead angle, narrow space or tube inner wall, etc., the beam is difficult to reach or uniformly illuminate, which will affect the effect of laser cleaning.

Laser cleaning was first studied and used by European and American countries, and the technology is relatively mature, but there are only a few enterprises engaged in it, and the market scale is not large. However, it was not until around 2005 that relevant papers introduced this technology in China, and only after 2011 did a small amount of laser cleaning really apply, mainly to cultural relics. By 2016, domestic industrial laser cleaning machines appeared in batches. In the following three years, the domestic laser industry attracted a wave of attention to laser cleaning.

After being controlled in China in 2020, the demand for laser equipment has increased rapidly, and the price of laser has dropped significantly again. Many people have paid attention to the application of high-power cutting and welding. But at the same time, more and more people consult with laser cleaning users, and some manufacturers' equipment shipments have also achieved good growth. This is due to the decline of laser price and the breakthrough of power technology, which are available from 200w to 2000w.

At present, laser cleaning has made market breakthroughs in new car manufacturing, high-speed rail wheel sets and bogies, aircraft skin paint removal and other fields, and ship cleaning will gradually be applied in the future. It can be predicted that laser cleaning will enter a 360-degree large-scale application stage, and the national shipment of relevant equipment products will usher in a rapid growth period.

About HGTECH: HGTECH is the pioneer and leader of laser industrial application in China, and the authoritative provider of global laser processing solutions. We have comprehensively arranged laser intelligent machine, measurement and automation production lines, and smart factory construction to provide overall solutions for intelligent manufacturing.