If you would like to remove delicately surface painting layers and do not want any damage to the base material, fiber laser cleaning machine would be the perfect choice. Laser cleaning can be applied to remove paint from various materials including metals, composites, plastic, rubber and stones. Coatings such as paint, varnish and rust can be cleaned with ease. Laser paint removal, to be sure can help update and reuse the material with paint you no longer needed.    

The traditional methods for paint removal involves the use of chemical reagent or abrasive media blasting. These methods are quite time consuming, leaving damage on the base material and cause extra costs such as purchasing and safe disposal of the chemical solvents. These issues bring us a better solution - laser cleaning equipment! How do we use it for paint removal?  To understand this, we must first understand the cleaning mechanism of laser cleaning equipment.

The cleaning process of laser cleaning equipment depends on the light pulse generated by the laser, which is based on the optical physical reaction caused by the interaction between the high intensity beam, the short pulse laser and the polluted layer. Laser cleaning equipment plays a crucial role in many industries, such as automobile manufacturing, semiconductor wafer cleaning, precision parts processing and manufacturing, building external wall cleaning, protection of cultural relics, circuit board cleaning, precision parts processing and manufacturing and LCD cleaning. For example, laser cleaning systems have long been used in the aviation industry. The surfaces of the aircraft have to be repainted after a certain period of time, but the old paint has to be completely removed before the repaint. The traditional mechanical paint removal method would do damage to the metal surface of aircraft, which brings hidden danger to the safety of flight. With multiple laser cleaning equipment working simultaneously, the paint layer can be completely removed from the surface of an A320 Airplane in two days without damaging the metal surface.

The paint applied to the surface of the metal acts as a special layer to protect the metal from corrosion and oxidation. In order to carry out effective cleaning on the premise of ensuring the safety of the substrate material, the laser parameters must be adjusted according to the situation so that the energy density of the light pulse is strictly controlled.  

Each laser pulse removes a layer of pollution of a certain thickness.  If the fouling layer is thick, multiple pulses are required for cleaning.  The number of pulses required to clean the surface depends on the degree of surface contamination.  An important result of the two thresholds is the self-control of cleaning.  Light pulses whose energy density is higher than the first threshold will remove contaminants until they reach the substrate.  However, because its energy density is below the destruction threshold of the substrate material, the substrate is not damaged.  

Based on the above theories, when the laser cleaning equipment is used for paint removal on the metal surface, the threshold value should be controlled appropriately. To achieve good quality, laser paint removal needs 2-3 steps. Firstly, a main pass using long pulse duration and high pulse energy removes the majority of the paint layer. For the second pass, the remaining paint coating can be removed by short pulses and high scanning speeds without damaging the substrate. If necessary, second pass can always be repeated. Finally an optional third pass to improve surface quality.