Laser Cleaning: How to Choose the Right Laser Source
1. Principle of laser cleaning:
The essence of laser cleaning is to irradiate a high-energy-density laser beam to the surface of the workpiece, so that the dirt, oxide layer, coating or coating on the surface of the workpiece is instantly melted, ablated, evaporated or peeled off when heated, so as to clean the surface of the workpiece. The process without damaging the substrate is an ideal choice for a new generation of industrial cleaning technology!
2. Application of laser cleaning:
The development of lasers also promotes the rapid development of laser cleaning technology in my country. Laser cleaning technology has also become an indispensable cleaning technology in high-end manufacturing fields such as industry, ships, aerospace, etc., including the removal of rubber dirt on the surface of tire molds, and the surface of gold film. Removal of contaminants and high-precision cleaning in the microelectronics industry.
The removal of rust, paint, oil and oxide layer on metal surfaces is the most widely used field of laser cleaning. Due to the differences in important parameters such as wavelength and power of different lasers, different materials and stains have different requirements for laser wavelength and power. In actual cleaning work, different laser cleaning methods should be selected according to the actual situation.
After a large number of experiments by the R&D team, MOPA lasers, compound lasers and continuous lasers are the most widely used lasers in the laser cleaning market.
3. MOPA pulse laser cleaning, to meet the surface cleaning of various materials
MOPA laser is one of the most widely used laser cleaning applications. Since the MOPA fiber laser system can be amplified strictly according to the seed signal source coupled into the system, the relevant characteristics of the laser such as center wavelength, pulse waveform and pulse width will not be changed. Therefore, the parameter adjustment dimension is higher and the range is wider. For different application scenarios of different materials, the adaptability is stronger, and the process window range is larger, which can meet the surface cleaning of various materials.
In addition, the MOPA laser has a high laser energy margin, which can be upgraded by improving the laser cleaning device, such as increasing the laser processing spot and cooperating with an intelligent system. It is worth mentioning that due to its excellent performance and flexible scene applicability, MOPA lasers are widely used in emerging industries such as new energy batteries.
4. Compound laser cleaning, the best choice for paint removal
Laser composite cleaning combines continuous laser and pulsed laser functionally at the same time to form the processing characteristics of 1+1>2. Fast speed, high efficiency, and more uniform cleaning quality. For different materials, lasers with different wavelengths can be used to clean at the same time to achieve the purpose of removing stains.
At present, laser composite cleaning is widely used in the fields of ships, auto repair, rubber molds, high-end machine tools, rails, and environmental protection, etc., to effectively remove resin, paint, oil, stains, dirt, rust, coatings, coatings and oxide layers on the surface of objects.
5. Continuous fiber laser cleaning to remove rust on metal surface
The working principle of the continuous fiber laser is that the pump light emitted by the pump source is coupled into the gain medium through a mirror. Since the gain medium is a rare earth element doped fiber, the pump light is absorbed, and the rare earth ions that absorb the photon energy generate energy. Level transition and realize particle number inversion. The inverted particles pass through the resonator, transition from the excited state back to the ground state, release energy, and form a stable laser output. The biggest advantage is that it can continuously emit light.
It is worth mentioning that with the breakthrough and stability of the ring spot technology, the ring fiber laser with the advantages of convenient process adjustment and simple operation has been widely used in the fields of welding and cleaning. rust, can greatly improve the cleaning efficiency.
6. The prospect of laser cleaning:
Green manufacturing is the general trend. With the advancement of technology and the improvement of environmental protection requirements, laser cleaning will participate in the iterative process of China’s manufacturing industry in a deeper and more comprehensive way, and become the main cleaning method for cleaner production in the industry.