China is recognized as a significant manufacturing country and the world’s largest processing country, and its industrial volume is also the largest in the world. To modernize the industry and solve a large number of labor issues, China has spent 25 years from the introduction of foreign companies to endogenous companies in the past 20 years from the 1990s to the present. Deterioration and industrial pollution, uncontrolled discharge of wastewater, waste gas, and waste products. The blue sky is covered by smog. The drinking water has a peculiar smell. The heavy metals in the soil exceed the standard, and all kinds of waste garbage besieged are significant environmental problems. The Chinese government has long been aware of the problem and has also vigorously built sewage treatment plants, waste gas adsorption and filtration facilities, etc. However, such measures only discharge first and then treat them, and the cost is also very high. In this context, it has become a very urgent and necessary task to change some production processes and upgrade more environmentally friendly cleaning processes. Laser cleaning/rust removal/paint removal/decontamination is an up-and-coming option, and it is also an important technology that gradually changes industrial environmental protection.
We have always believed that laser cleaning technology cannot be counted as laser processing. It is a workpiece surface treatment technology that is different from laser processing. It is different from the previous laser cutting, welding, drilling, marking, cladding, etc. It uses the high energy of the laser and the material to change the shape, nature of the material, or the relationship between the parts to achieve the processing effect. The laser cleaning does not change the material matrix but only removes the surface’s stains, rust, dust, or residues. Cleaning up is a surface “washing” process, not a laser processing technology. Nevertheless, it does not mean that laser cleaning is a technology without any technology at all. On the contrary, its application must consider factors such as the material, the thickness of the stain, the appropriate laser power, energy, etc., because of its applicable range. More extensive, different material applications require laser cleaning systems with other parameters, so there are still many articles to do in-process exploration, research, and testing. My country’s laser cleaning technology research and equipment development started late, basically tracking the development of foreign countries. Although some results have been achieved relatively quickly, there is a clear gap compared with foreign countries. Since 2004, some research articles on laser cleaning have appeared in the academic circles of our country. By 2010, the Laser Fusion Center of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics tried to develop laser cleaning equipment for the first time in China, and it was successfully used in Yungang caves, stone walls, and stone statues. , Murals and other cultural relics. In the next few years, the number of papers on laser cleaning technology from various domestic research institutions gradually increased, and there was also a lot of attention.
In March 2017, several major domestic fiber laser manufacturers launched laser products that can be used for laser cleaning. Companies engaged in the development of laser cleaning equipment are also emerging. Laser cleaning has gradually emerged from a “black technology.” Known to more people, people in various industries such as automobiles, molds, home appliances, electronics manufacturing, spraying, metal products, etc., have learned about the magical efficiency and environmental protection “efficacy” of laser cleaning, and they are very interested in trying it out. The early laser cleaning machines had high technology content, and high laser procurement costs and the price of the whole machine was also increased. There was a machine with more than one million units. Although many potential users expressed their desire to use, they faced more than one million users. Procurement costs are still indecisive. In the past year or so, there have been manufacturers engaged in the production of similar lasers. There are more manufacturers of complete laser cleaning machines, and the overall price has dropped. Now a medium-power laser cleaning machine costs from 100,000 to 300,000. Both are, of course, the product quality is also uneven and must be carefully screened when purchasing.
