Has Anyone Seen Or Used A Laser Cleaner ??

[billt460]

This video shows a guy restoring an old cast iron skillet. At the 2:00 mark he uses a Laser Cleaner. It works like a sandblaster, removing carbon and other foreign matter by burning it off.

It's obviously somewhat powerful. I've never seen or heard of these things. The units are very expensive, with the cheapest one at about 20,000 Euros. (Assuming I'm reading the currency right). They go all the way up to 129,000 Euros for a 2KW machine. There are similar size / cost U.S. made machines. Some of the lower powered units are a bit cheaper.

That seems very expensive for what it does. Especially compared to a really good bead or sandblaster. Even if you factor in the air compressor to run it. And it would seem with the super powerful units, you could do a lot of damage.

Especially if you momentarily stopped in one area, and didn't keep it moving at a steady rate. I wonder what cleaning process would call for using a device like this only? As opposed to a glass bead or sand blaster. This looks like it would work somewhat faster on heavy deposits. But for the price it should.

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Laserpuhdistus kuitulaserilla on hiljaista ja siistiä. Laserpuhdistuslaitteet eivät vahingoita pohjamateriaalia tai vaadi puhdistusaineita.

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[spackard]

I'd guess you wouldn't want the headache. Light-proof curtains, warning signs, protective eyewear, safety interlocks. FDA regulates lasers.

"You'll shoot your eye out" is bad enough, but in this case you might shoot your neighbor's eye out, a pilot's eye out, etc.

 

[Spectre694]

Mostly used for either delicate items such as say a bronze sculpture or very large items like a piece of equipment on the factory floor.

A cast iron pan would definitely not be the ideal use for it but looked cool on YouTube.

The process is called laser ablation cleaning if you want to Google around for some more info.

 

[billt460]

Mostly used for either delicate items such as say a bronze sculpture or very large items like a piece of equipment on the factory floor.

I would think using it on anything delicate would be far worse. You can see when he was cleaning the handle area of the skillet, how the laser itself was digging into the bare cast iron deeper in some areas than others. Leaving a bunch of lines of varying depth, parallel with the laser beam.

 

[kschachn]

I would think using it on anything delicate would be far worse. You can see when he was cleaning the handle area of the skillet, how the laser itself was digging into the bare cast iron deeper in some areas than others. Leaving a bunch of lines of varying depth, parallel with the laser beam.

The laser shouldn’t be removing much if any of the iron metal base. Rust is iron oxide, so there will be missing metal appearing after the rust is removed. It was already missing before the rust was removed.

 

[JohnnyG]

My dentist used a laser to drill out a cavity. It was small and took about 10 seconds, no pain.

 

[Spectre694]

I would think using it on anything delicate would be far worse. You can see when he was cleaning the handle area of the skillet, how the laser itself was digging into the bare cast iron deeper in some areas than others. Leaving a bunch of lines of varying depth, parallel with the laser beam.

These come in a wide variety of power levels. Some are few watts to tens of watts the bigger ones are several kilowatts.

It's just a matter of picking the correct unit and power level. If you've ablated the base material it's way too powerful.

 

[MolaKule]

They used lasers to etch cylinder walls for better oil retention:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261700960_Effect_of_laser_treatment_on_the_surface_of_cast_iron_cylinder_bores

Reducing engine oil and fuel consumptions by multidimensional laser surface texturing on cylinder surface

The optimization of cylinder surface topography draws immense amounts of researches, since it has far-reaching effects on engines’ overall performance…

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[UncleDave]

This video shows a guy restoring an old cast iron skillet. At the 2:00 mark he uses a Laser Cleaner. It works like a sandblaster, removing carbon and other foreign matter by burning it off.

It's obviously somewhat powerful. I've never seen or heard of these things. The units are very expensive, with the cheapest one at about 20,000 Euros. (Assuming I'm reading the currency right). They go all the way up to 129,000 Euros for a 2KW machine. There are similar size / cost U.S. made machines. Some of the lower powered units are a bit cheaper.

That seems very expensive for what it does. Especially compared to a really good bead or sandblaster. Even if you factor in the air compressor to run it. And it would seem with the super powerful units, you could do a lot of damage.

Especially if you momentarily stopped in one area, and didn't keep it moving at a steady rate. I wonder what cleaning process would call for using a device like this only? As opposed to a glass bead or sand blaster. This looks like it would work somewhat faster on heavy deposits. But for the price it should.

Laserpuhdistus | Kuitulaserpuhdistuslaitteet | W2M Laser

Laserpuhdistus kuitulaserilla on hiljaista ja siistiä. Laserpuhdistuslaitteet eivät vahingoita pohjamateriaalia tai vaadi puhdistusaineita.

w2m.fi

Yes.

We rented one to clean old sprinkler heads worth about 7K, and some boat parts not available for a restoration.

Often in videos you just see the gun - making it look like a hand phaser, but there is a rather large machine connected you need to manage.

 

[billt460]

Yes.

We rented one to clean old sprinkler heads worth about 7K, and some boat parts not available for a restoration.

What did it offer over conventional glass bead or sandblasting?

 

[UncleDave]

I'd guess you wouldn't want the headache. Light-proof curtains, warning signs, protective eyewear, safety interlocks. FDA regulates lasers.

"You'll shoot your eye out" is bad enough, but in this case you might shoot your neighbor's eye out, a pilot's eye out, etc.

They have quite a finite distance of effectiveness.

 

[UncleDave]

What did it offer over conventional glass bead or sandblasting?

Or even dry ice blasting which we also used before.

It came down to 3 things -

The ability to get into crevices better like the logo he cleaned
No left over abrasive material to get into seals/ threads
No damage to sealing edges

You need to preceed it with a vacuum or all that rust gets over everything in your facility.