Why is laser cleaning better than more traditional methods?

A key question that we are frequently asked is “How does laser cleaning work differently to the other more traditional methods?”. There are some key problems that lasers have helped to address and solve.

Firstly, other methods were contact processes, meaning they were abrasive and damaging to the materials that they were working with. Take media blasting, for example, which essentially acts like a pressure washer, but with pressurised air, to blast a material until it is clean. It gets the job done, but it often affects the material that you don’t want to damage below!

Laser cleaning, on the other hand, is non-contact and non-abrasive, and so will only irradiate the material that you want to get rid of. This makes the process in particular, ideal for cleaning intricate and textured materials.

You also have a great deal of control over the beam, meaning you can achieve the desired depth that you want to.

Further to this, you can irradiate the whole surface layer of a material. Or a much thinner layer, say the topcoat of paint, but not the primer below. Or, should you wish, you can just clean a very small section. If using another process which simply blasts the material, it is hard to enjoy such a high level of control.

One of the key benefits in the way that laser cleaning works is that not much waste is left over due to the irradiation process; the substrate is simply vaporised rather than left as waste. The majority of the waste that is left over comes as dust particles. And it can be easily collected and removed by the user.