FAQ

In nuclear facilities, one of the primary challenges is managing radioactive contamination that accumulates on equipment, tools, and materials in contact with cooling liquids. To address this, the facility employs two main strategies:

1. Reducing Radiation at the Source

This strategy focuses on lowering radiation levels by addressing the contaminated surfaces, tools, and equipment. Radioactive contaminants typically concentrate on the surface of materials, such as metals, because these contaminants tend to remain at the surface rather than penetrating deeply. By removing or reducing surface contamination, the overall radiation exposure can be significantly lowered, minimizing risks to workers and the environment.

2. Chemical Stripping and Solidification

Chemical stripping is a commonly used method to remove surface contaminants. However, this approach has a significant drawback: the contaminants are dissolved into a liquid form, which must then be carefully managed and disposed of. One method to handle this liquid waste is mixing it with concrete, which solidifies the liquid, making it easier to dispose of. However, this process still involves challenges, such as the safe handling of the contaminated liquid and its eventual disposal.

Laser Cleaning as an Alternative

Laser cleaning presents an innovative alternative to chemical stripping, offering several important advantages for decontaminating surfaces:

• Contactless Removal: Unlike chemical methods, laser cleaning is a non-contact process. This is crucial because it eliminates the need for direct interaction with the contaminated surface, thereby reducing the risk of generating secondary waste or exposing workers to radiation during the cleaning process.

• Minimized Airborne Contaminants: When using lasers to remove surface oxides and contaminants, the amount of waste that becomes airborne is minimized. This is important because it further reduces the potential for radiation spread in the air, making the process safer for workers and more environmentally friendly.

• Surface-Only Impact: Since radioactive contaminants are typically concentrated at the surface of materials, laser cleaning can effectively target and remove them without affecting the underlying material. This not only reduces radiation exposure but may also render the material safe for reuse or recycling, provided the radiation level is reduced to acceptable thresholds.

  P-laser has developed specialized pulsed laser beam profiles designed to optimize the removal rate of surface oxides, particularly for applications in nuclear facilities where contamination is concentrated on the surfaces of materials, such as pump components. In these cases, the contamination typically resides within the first few micrometers of the base material.

  To effectively reduce radioactive contamination in these situations, it may be necessary to remove not just the surface oxide layer but also a small amount of the base material beneath it. This ensures that the radioactive contaminants are fully removed or sufficiently reduced to safe levels. To achieve this, P-laser's laser systems utilize a more aggressive beam profile designed for deeper penetration into the material. These laser beams are optimized to remove a thin layer of the base material while maintaining precision and control, thus addressing the contamination effectively.

  Key Points About P-Laser’s Aggressive Beam Profiles:

  • Tailored Pulse Profiles: P-laser's pulsed laser technology uses tailored beam profiles that allow for high energy density delivery in a controlled manner. This is especially useful when dealing with thin, contaminated surface layers that need to be removed without causing unnecessary damage to the underlying material.

  • Targeting Surface Contamination: In nuclear facilities, contaminants like radioactive isotopes are often concentrated on the surface layer. By using more aggressive laser pulses, the system can precisely target and remove the contaminated surface layer without disturbing the integrity of the deeper material, such as pump components.

  • Material Removal: For components like pumps, where the contamination resides in the first micrometers, laser cleaning needs to remove a small amount of the base material, often just a few micrometers. This ensures the radioactive contaminants are completely eliminated or reduced to acceptable levels. The aggressive beam profile helps in removing this material efficiently.

  • Maintaining Precision: Despite the higher aggressiveness of the beam, the laser system still allows for precision, ensuring that only the contaminated surface layer is removed. This minimizes the loss of material, preserving the structural integrity of the component.

  • Inline sensor technology (patent): by measuring the reflected light at the surface where the infrared laser beams hits we can control the cleaning inline in an automated modus. This allows you to control the cleaning efficiency over spectral analysis. 

  By incorporating these specialized pulsed laser beam profiles, P-laser’s technology provides a highly effective method for decontaminating surfaces, particularly when deeper material removal is required. This approach optimizes the balance between effectively removing radioactive contamination and preserving the underlying material, making it a powerful tool for nuclear facilities operating under the ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principle.

Laser cleaning is about fluence (joule/cm2) and the power amount is more in relation to the surface cleaning speed.

First we need to make clear every contamination needs a certain amount of energy in time to get a cleaning effect. Depending on the % absorbed light energy it needs to overcome the tresshold limit to be cleaned. Absorbance on a surface is depending on colour and chemical caracteristics. To remove paint we need to evaporate the paint matrix with enough energy. An aviation paint is extreme resistant compared to a steel primer paint or shop primer. An epoxy 2k paint more resistant then a 1K paint system. To break higher chemical organic bonds you need more energy. Also the color is an important variation, black paint will absorb the maximum amount of light energy, white paint will partially reflect the incoming energy.If we want to remove oxides on a ferro or non ferro substrate the full advantage of a pulsed laser is clear.The pulses are creating a shock-dillatation effect between substrate and oxide layer. On metals and non metals like aluminium you have natural oxide layers or induced oxide layer by a previous heat treatement or the production process itself. The previous process will determ the hardness and composition structure of the oxide layer and the energy needed to remove this layer. Therfore we need the right pulse energy to remove the oxide layer. The puls energy is concentrated on a certain spot size in relation to the beam quality and focal lenght. The smaller the spot size the higher the energy density, high densities can result in surface structuring or melting pools if the puls duration is long enough. Puls duration is the time the energy is delivered to the surface in the spot area. This also brings you to the peak power delivered in a puls being Kw pro puls in most lasers.

The shorter the puls duration the less thermal impact we will have on the surface. With nano second lasers we are still in the thermal influence zone for most carbon metals. If we move to pico and femto second lasers the thermal influence gradually disappears to become cold ablation or spaltation.

This field of femto second lasers is a complete other research area with other material reaction properties.

So puls energy is the most important factor and power is related to the nominal frequency the pulses are hitting the surface. A 100 watt laser with maximum 5 mj puls energy will have a 20 khz nominal frequency. If you increase the puls rate to 40 khz you will get half the puls energy. If your scanner speed can be increased you will get double the amount of pulses hitting the surface. Some laser source constructors will limit these variations due to the maximum

peak power travelling thrue the fibre. 

Lasers have become an essential technology in space, with applications ranging from defensive systems like intercepting  missiles to ignition for fuel and even propelling spacecraft using light sails. By placing a laser in space and directing it toward a surface or light sail on a spacecraft, we can create a propulsion force through photon pressure. In the vacuum of space, where there’s no atmospheric drag or resistance, this photon pressure can steadily push the spacecraft forward, creating a fuel-free propulsion system.

The concept of laser-propelled space travel is both efficient and sustainable. As long as the laser beam maintains its focus on the sail, the spacecraft will continue to accelerate. This form of propulsion has the potential to revolutionize space exploration, enabling long-duration missions and travel to distant regions of the solar system and beyond without relying on traditional fuel sources.

The basic laser has to be powered with electricity from solar panels mounted on the space station. Some additional conventional control steering/braking rockets should be needed onboard the space-sail-ship to correct your course heading and to decelerate at the arrival orbital- mars-space station. Also the base laser station has to balance the reaction forces of the photon stream with conventional rockets.

In today’s industry, there’s an imperative shift toward low-carbon operations to help build a sustainable world. Pulsed lasers play a pivotal role in this transformation by providing an efficient way to compress energy. By harnessing focused photon streams, pulsed lasers are not only beneficial for industrial cleaning but have broad applications across medicine, advanced manufacturing, and even space technology.

These lasers offer a powerful, sustainable alternative to traditional energy-intensive processes. With high precision and low environmental impact, they can drive industries toward reduced carbon emissions and enhance efficiency across various sectors. The versatility of pulsed lasers represents a step forward in aligning cutting-edge technology with the global push for sustainability. P-laser can help you to achieve this goal, with our world wide partner network we are at the front in every country to bring industrial innovations.

A CW laser is emitting a continious laser beam.By putting a focal lens in the light path we can focus this beam to a very small micrometer spot to increase the energy density and to melt down your metalic surface to get a weld - or cutting function. Only in a robot or automated mode you could control the melting at the surface to a certain degree. In a manual mode it is impossible to get a repeatable surface quality of any degree. To partially overcome this effect CW lasers can be modulated. In fact we are switching on/off the CW laser at medium to high frequency to build in a cooling time at the surface and avoid melting,cutting marks if you try to clean. This cannot be  confused with a pulsed laser. The pulsed laser is building up a extreme high energy amount in a nano second range or even shorter to avoid thermal impact on the surface. It's like spring loading or an electric capacitor system.If you are modulating a 2000 watt CW laser at 200Hz you get delivered 10 watt in the 4-5 micro second switch ON/ OFF time delay.With the pulsed system you get 2000 watt at 20khz delivering 100mj pulses in 150 nano(150x1000x1000000) seconds resulting in a huge 0.9 mega watt peakpoweron the surface. If this light bullet, micro level explosion, is hitting the surface most metal systems have no time to absorb this amount off energy in this short time delay. Absorbing means the energy of the infrared light is going over (transmitted) into a base material.The energy can be used to give more vibration energy to the base material his electrons if the exposure time is long enough. Finally the base material will heat up. Due to the short pulse duration time the electrons have not enough time to react ( is depending on the materials and there melting point and other surface opto- coupling charateristics). In short a modulated CW cannot be used to replace a pulsed laser.

We have the impression laser cleaning and welding devices  are becomming a  Chinese mass export product towards the EU and USA.

Due to the visual video attraction and the magic laser technology, the Chinese producer are mass producing a specific laser type called the CW laser or continious wave laser. Seen the fact lasers in general are pure high tech very expensive products it is extreme attractive for them to produce this laser type at a fraction off the normal price, let be clear at dumping prices to flood the market. Like the EV market they use a cheap iron- phosfate based battery of a lower quality to conquer the Western markets by mass production. In the case of out laser topic we see some public danger.

By flooding Youtube channels with cheap devices they  create a new home consumer market .Websites like Shein, Temu and Alibaba are selling these  devices  as 3 in 1 package, being a laser welding -, cutting- and cleaning laser.T he Chinees devices are stamped with CE stickkers and should be at the same safety level as our Western counter parts. Opening these devices is a CE-culture-shock. The electric cabling is poor, no safety relais inside. The emergency button is in the same 220 volt circuit as the main switch.The manual, if present, is the same for welding, cleaning or cutting. So yes there is a potential big danger for non professional users.  Using the low cost CW infrared laser source at 2-3 KW output power is like handing over a machine gun / flame thrower to the every day consumer. The potential risk for eye and skin injuries are lethal present.

So yes this is dangerous and should be limited to professional use, who will directely face the CE problem, but public use should be banned. 

Our aim at P-laser is to provide EU certified laser cleaning equipment to create a sustainable industrial process. We are strong against mass flooding public markets with cheap products which cannot be recycled and are piling up in electronic scrap yards.

If you want to clean a mould, two things are crucial: what type is your contaminant( organic, inorganic, or oxide), and what is the base material? You usually don't want to damage the surface or change the material properties. Laser cleaning is, in fact a balancing act between evaporating the contaminant and not changing the base material of your mold. Many Chinese suppliers don't know the difference and will offer you cutting or marking lasers. These so-called CW (continuous wave) lasers are mass-produced Chinese products with no aim of solving your mould problem. A pulsed laser system is needed to have complete thermal surface control without damage. You don't need 2000 watts to clean a mould. 100 watts can be enough with the right system. It becomes more difficult if you have a unique polished or chrome-coated surface. P- lasers build unique systems with the right laser source and optical components to preserve your mould. Trust our 35-year experience.

CO2 gas-tube lasers are well known for cutting machines in relation to steel and glass material. There exist also pulsed Co2 laser which are used for surface cleaning. High-speed polygon in combination with Co2 laser are used to strip military aircraft in the US.

But as an industrial cleaning tool it is a no go. Due to the dimensions and the gas medium as a laser beam generator, it is to bulky and complex. This 10x higher wave length number has some advantages in cleaning on the absorption side. This wavelength is absorbed by most organic contaminants at a higher level than the infra-red 1064 nm laser.  This means every Watt unit of laser energy reaching the surface is transferring its light energy at a higher level than one unit of our  1064 nm type infra-red laser. Further, the <Co2 10.000 nm wavelength is not well absorbed by aluminium. So yes in well specific cases in has some advantages, but mainly, it is not used in industrial cleaning applications. Typical due to the high-energy laser beam this kind of light energy is guided over mirrors instead of a flexible fibre. This is the reason in every Co2-based application, the bulky laser source has to be in a very short distance from the surface.

The Infrared laser light around 1064 nm or 1 micrometre wave length lasers are conceived in the same material: yttrium-aluminium garnett (YAG) doped with a Neodium element. in the case of a fibre laser, the laser light is generated in the same material as the cristal rod solid-state laser. But then stops the comparison between fibre lasers and solid-state YAG lasers.

The classical YAG laser uses a solid lase cavity to generate the laser light bouncing between two mirrors. Due to the extreme positioning accuracy of the mirrors and the water cooling around the crystal, we get a complex, unstable laser source. Decades of development made this laser the preferred university study object. Industrial applications demand reliable laser sources without needing scientists around to keep the machine running.

With all respect to the enormous developments done in this field, it is not the most preferred laser source in the industrial world. Industrial applications are always demanding continuous improvement quality: cutting/welding thicker steel controlling the surface heat impact. This requires a better laser light quality. In short, the laser quality of your generated light beam is equal to the focability to the most minor laser spot on the surface. This is a problematic point for YAG lasers, seeing the laser cavity restrictions. Instead, the fibre laser can achieve a far higher light quality and stable quality in long production runs. Integrating YAG lasers demands extra controlling sensors to ensure a well-known calibrated laser beam before you start welding. This adds extra costs and process uncertainty in already complex welding processes. I would say a cleaning process is a bit less critical than most welding applications but it is clear the pulsed fibre laser is also, in this field the preferred tool.

The most significant advantage is they have no maintenance. The light is generated directly in one fibre and connected to the output fibre. You have no moving elements inside. This system is not sensitive to vibrations or temperature variations. Only a cooling is added to the system and will demand some maintenance.

In the case of the traditional YAG laser, you have yearly maintenance to keep the laser on a stable power output level. This demands the intervention of specialized laser technicians.

The nature of the traditional laser-build cavity causes this problem. In short, a laser beam is generated in a cristal rod surrounded by a critical cooling system. The stability of laser output depends on the cooling efficiency. Water cooling systems are never entirely stable and, by nature will influence the laser output. The crystal is fixed on a super stable platform, but every nanometer of material deformation influences the laser performance again. if you get the beam out of the laser cavity, you must direct it into a 200 µ-meter fibre. This is nearly a NASA moon landing operation. Every vibration and thermal material deviation will result in less power output. In welding and cleaning processes, a +/-3%  stable output is crucial for your process. This is the main reason why fibre lasers are used in all automotive high-quality laser processes. They are the preferred tools because of their stability, low maintenance, and low energy use. A further significant difference between a fibre laser and a traditional YAG laser is the pulse duration problem. A fibre laser will generate the same pulse duration for the complete frequency range. The YAG laser will generate its own crystal material- pulse duration and will have a puls-duration variation in function of the frequency you demand. This is an extreme limitation regarding process flexibility. This means you cannot change the frequency without changing the plus duration, which is directly affecting the surface result.

The frequency of the pulses, together with the spot size, will give the maximum cleaning speed. With the puls-overlap plus energy, this is your process's main tuning point. But if the plus duration changes along the frequency, you get different heat effects on your substrate. Your process setting possibilities are limited with the YAG laser. A YAG laser finds its origin as a university development but needs a long way to be industrial reliable.

We find only  YAG solid-state crystal manufacturers like Trump and Cleanlaser. 

It will depend on the type of laser used. There are two primary types: the crystal rod laser and the solid-state laser. The latter generates light in an Nd YAG laser cavity. Around an Nd-doped yttrium silica glass crystal, specific LEDs are mounted. These LEDs stimulate the Nd dopant present in the crystal to emit radiation. However, the excess heat energy produced by this process must be cooled down, resulting in an energy deficit. This type of laser has a maximum energy efficiency of 27%, which is relatively low. On the other hand, the fibre laser generates light that stays inside a glass fibre, with no mirrors, outcoupling or fibre coupling. These lasers have energy rates of 40% and are increasing yearly, resulting in highly compact laser systems.

Yes, it is possible to pass transparent materials like water and glass. The laser will lose a bit of the power by absorption losses in the water depending on the water quality.  But yes you can derust under water.

While it is true that lasers can cut into human tissue, it is essential to note that this refers explicitly to CO2 CW steel cutting/welding lasers. These lasers have been utilized in the medical field to remove tumours due to their ability to stop bleeding after the incision. On the other hand, UV lasers are the preferred choice for eye surgeons as they can cut organic human tissue. The cleaning lasers utilized are primarily Infra Red pulsed lasers, inherently less problematic than their continuous wave (CW) counterparts. This is because infrared laser light can easily be transmitted through a flexible glass fibre rather than relying on mirrors like CO2 lasers.

Additionally, human skin does not absorb this type of radiation well, except for darker-coloured hairs or tattoos on the skin. The inks used in tattoos are usually heavy metal-based, so when exposed to the laser, the chemicals boil and evaporate in the skin tissue and blood vessels. While an infrared pulsed cleaning laser cannot cut through fingers, it can cause significant burning wounds if held in one spot for an extended period.

Lasers are costly tools and are often 2-4 times more expensive than traditional processes like sandblasting dry ice and chemicals. However, the operational costs are only 1/10 of the traditional techniques.

A chemical process is very cheap to start but has high operational costs and unacceptable human risks today when an accident occurs. Blasting processes have a high blasting material, energy - and maintenance cost. The dry ice process is probably the most costly around. First, we need compressed air to produce dry ice with a high carbon footprint. We know dry ice is promoted as a renewable stream from other processes, but finally, it is fake news. It is a waste stream product, creating afterwards more carbon dioxide. So yes, laser cleaning is the ultimate integration process in a brand-new process line. Unfortunately, in 90% of the cases, we want to replace a  multi-functional traditional process. Do we have a chance?    Absolutely, if you need a low-cost production on demand. . Only top efficient production organisations can capitalize massively by investing and adapting their processes. They will take the lead in their segment. Integrating lasers will eliminate unclear quality problems because now you have a controllable process, not adding extra production problems.

Fibre lasers have built-in security devices to avoid this kind of error. After a fibre cut, the laser source will be cut off in micro-seconds. If the light should come out, it will be very fast divergent and lose all density to provoke danger.

We often encounter this question to replace an existing sandblasting activity. In 80% of the cases, we cannot! Why? A traditional free manual blasting cabinet can handle multi-span-off part dimensions without problems. The mobile laser can also clean many parts but cannot be compared to laser cleaning. The 2,5 m2/hr speed of stripping a paint layer PU 300 µm is too slow compared with a sandblaster at 6-8 m2/hr. The sandblaster is outrunning the laser cleaning system in most cases. If you have dedicated requirements, the laser cleaning can crawl back into the game. You have a single part to be treated in an automated process, and you get everything you want. You can get the same result on every part, you can have an inline quality tracing system, your process can run on start/stop intervals, and you get the smallest carbon footprint on energy level and lowest waste stream.

So yes, laser cleaning will pay itself back numerous times compared to sandblasting in this case. This is the most challenging point for traditional industry to cope with. Integrating laser cleaning demands apparent choices in your process thinking. But in today's industrial world, new big constraints are product quality and slim energy-based processes with low environmental impact.

Today on YouTube, we see a lot of companies presenting their laser magic by derusting a surface that looks new. Even the most Chinese-offered lasers are non-pulsed low-cost lasers with high power outputs. So what is the catch here? First, you need to know that many different types of rust exist. We have superficial and deep pitting rust where the base material is affected. The Chinese laser companies ignore the differences and sell you a low-cost CW laser heat torch. They even have scientific university studies to explain the good derusting possibilities with a continuous laser called CW. The CW laser is the most accessible laser you can produce in the laser world. The Chinese dominate the CW market with cutting and marking lasers of this type and try to sell you this type as a magic cleaning system. Due to the fact the derusting is based on a shrinking or dilatation effect, in short, the breaking off the oxide particle from the surface by temperature  difference of  between surface and particle, you need a shock effect to clean it. So, only pulsed lasers can be  more efficient. The CW laser is a heating device that turns the red rust particles into the black rust-oxide variant. If you need to paint your surface, this is not a good surface preparation. Pitting rust is also tricky for a pulsed laser because the rust particle has adherence on the surface. If you clean it the surface will look dark grey, but below, there is still rust.

In general, we can say the solid state Nd YAG laser source is an older type of laser still used, but it has far more maintenance issues than a modern fibre laser. In contrast to the YAG laser, where the laser light is produced in an Nd crystal rod with two mirrors at each end, the light in a fibre laser is conceived into a fibre directly and guided in one way to the output fibre. Everything stays in the fibre, resulting in a very high wall plug efficiency, unlike the YAG laser, where you have critical cristal cavity cooling. Further, you need to couple the outcoming laser beam into a fibre. You can imagine the sensitivity of injecting a 100-micrometre laser spot into a 400-micrometre diameter fibre. A lot can go wrong with changing environment as those lasers are vibration sensitive. A YAG laser will produce a flatter laser beam, making this laser soft and non-aggressive on most surfaces. The fibre laser produces a more Gaussian type of laser energy distribution beam. This higher beam quality can be tuned down with suitable optics to get a flat beam type. If you consider that pulse duration is always constant with a fibre laser over different frequency settings and not with a YAG laser, your choice must be a fibre laser. Also, the dimensions of a YAG laser are far bigger because of the cooling you need and bulky electronic frequency generators. The future is clearly with the fibre lasers because of the higher efficiency and no maintenance aspects of the source itself.

Yes, the fibre length is limited by the amount of energy you can guide true a glass fibre. You have high-energy lasers and low energy density lasers. A low-density laser can have up to 100 m fibre. We produced a 2000 watt system with 100m fibre in 2021. You cannot avoid a quality change of your laser light after passing true 100 m of fibre. The power loss is very marginal, but the laser beam has lost a bit of its light quality. This will be seen as you try to focus this light at the end of the fibre.

The low-power systems ( but those are high density) will have 5-8 m as an absolute maximum for the moment. 

In most systems, we use fixed pulse length. Depending on the fibre length and light quality we are limited in sending a certain amount of energy through an optical fibre. If we have a pulse of 1mj and 100 nanoseconds long, then we are sending 10 Kw through the fibre. A fibre can withstand a certain amount of energy and can behave non-linear if pushed to the limit. Therefore we could say the pulse duration is an important factor to consider on the engineering side. For the cleaning process, we can conclude: the shorter the puls length or duration the higher the energy shock on the surface and the less the thermal influence will be  on the surface. Oxides are not so sensitive to shorter pulse lengths but we prefer the non-re-oxidation effect of the shorter duration. For paints or organics, a longer pulslenght is more efficient to overcome the thermal isolation topic.  if to short, the energy is not enough transferred to the paint layer. Only for special applications do we need to consider the pulslenght as an important factor. Seen the fact the pulse duration has some big influence on fibre and optics and there overload risks it is better to have a fixed pulse duration instead of a variable one which could lead to errors. 

Mostly we can clean metals and non-metals, also, organic and inorganic ( stones) can be cleaned to a certain degree. To have a good cleaning result, we need an as dark as possible contamination and highly reflective light-coloured substrate to avoid damage. Black smoke deposit on a sandstone is easy to clean. Yellow paint on sandstone is more difficult because this yellow colour is not absorbing well the laser radiation. Laser will remove nearly all oxides in a very big range of metals and non-metals. A shrinking-off effect on the surface removes oxides; the oxide layer has a different energy-heating speed or flux than the substrate. Oxides also absorb more energy than the highly reflective aluminium surface. Example: You can remove ink on a white paper without burning the paper. Lasers are also used to remove hair or tattoos; this is based on the higher absorption of those black hairs and the darker-than-skin tattoo ink. The human skin is not absorbing very well the infrared laser light.

Many so-called Chinese CW laser models are on the market, claiming to be a cheap cleaning solution. Yes, the CW laser is a very cheap laser, but it can not be compared with the pulsed laser. Laser cleaning is a surface balance equation between heating and cooling down. The contamination present on the surface must be quickly heated without heating the surface and damaging it. This sensitive balance is only possible with pulsed lasers that will shoot very short ( 100 nanoseconds long) heat-energy- bullets to the surface. In time, the bullet size can be regulated over the software and optical lenses. Although we shoot 100,000 bullets a second (100Khz) with a specific energy value (millijoule), the surface can cool down between the laser bullets. This prevents the surface from overheating and provokes melting on the surface. Every material consists of atoms and electrons circling around, if energy is added to a material, the electrons start to vibrate more. Returning to the normal state is called electron relaxation time, measured in nanoseconds. A pulsed laser can make the electron vibrate but leaves enough relaxation time to bring the electron back in normal relaxation mode. Therefore, you need a pulsed laser to obtain a cleaning result that can be repeated. A continuous wave laser or CW shoots a constant amount of energy to the surface, which you cannot control manually. The bandwidth of useability is 1 against 1000 for a pulsed laser. A CW laser is used for cutting, welding, hardening or cladding. Even in the cutting and welding process, research is developing towards pulsed systems to have more control on the surface. The heat impact is not wanted because it creates oxides in the melt pool. With a CW laser, you create an unwanted overheating effect on your surface; sandblasting will be needed to paint a quality reference surface. CW lasers are mainly a Chinese marketing joke to mislead customers at low prices. They are not on the same quality level as the Western companies about production processes and final customer quality.

In the future, we will see shorter pulse lengths be used for cleaning. Scientific lasers with femto and pico second pulses already exist but are expensive. With a femtosecond pulse duration, the energy transition to the surface is so short that heat impact does not affect the material.

Prices in the different countries are the responsibility of our distributors. However, in general, P-Laser Low Power machines start from 60.000 euros.

To operate a cleaning laser, you need electricity: 0.4 kW (50W) to 7 kW (1000W).  Furthermore, some cleaning lasers use compressed air. Lastly, there is a yearly fee for the P-Laser software, Cleansweep. The fibre laser is, in fact, maintenance-free. There are no moving parts inside and no micro-positioned mirrors inside the laser source, like a YAG laser. You don't have to shoot your 5 mm laser beam into a 25 µ-meter fibre ( human hair) to transport the laser light to your laser gun. The fibre laser resolves 90% of the problems with traditional YAG lasers sensitive to cooling and exterior temperature changes. No maintenance may be a heavy statement, but you must look at the lasers and optic chiller regularly. A YAG laser requires a minimum of 1 year of a full check by a highly trained specialist. The fibre lasers don't require any maintenance, only chiller filters, and your personnel must check your lens surface.

Low Power P-Lasers are air-cooled, and don't require a lot of maintenance. However, it is important to keep the lens and filters clean at all time.

Mid and High Power P-Lasers are water cooled, and require a bit more maintenance. Check the filters and chillers every month. Keep the lens clean at all time.

We recommend a yearly check-up of your system by P-Laser staff. We also offer a remote monitoring service, with which P-Laser staff can check alarms, temperatures, humidity etc. as a proactive tool.

P-Laser offers one day of training for every customer. The training includes a safety course and training on how to operate the laser and how to use the software.

To be able to suggest the right solution, we need some information on the application, such as:

• What is the application?
• Which industry are we talking about?
• Which cleaning method do you use at the moment?
• What is the contamination you want to remove? 
• What is the thickness of the layer?
• What is the type of base material?
• What is the surface (in m² or in m²/hour) that has to be cleaned?
• Do you need an in-line application?
• How often do you need to clean the material?

We always need to test the result of laser cleaning on your material, as every application is different.

The speed with which a laser can clean a surface depends on the power of the laser, the software settings, and the variables mentioned above. For example, the removal of wax from a piece of aluminum takes 12m²/hour with a 500W machine; removing blue epoxy paint takes an hour for 2m² with a 100W machine, and removing decolorisation from a weld can be done at a speed of 8.6 m/min.

However, every application has to be tested to determine the best possible cleaning speed.

Generally speaking, automated applications and robots achieve the highest cleaning speed.

Laser cleaning is a safe cleaning method, but the radiation is dangerous for the eyes. Always use appropriate laser goggles when the machine is active. 

P-Laser Low and Mid Power Machines work with 110-220V, High Power Lasers require 380-440V.

The laser works in the following 'normal' conditions: temperatures  between 0 and 38°C, and humidity is between 25 and 55%. If the environment is too hot, cold or humid, P-Laser suggests using climatisation and/or dehumidification. 

All systems can be automated or mounted on a robot. 

Yes, we have some installations that have been running 24/7 for years.

The laser beam can go up to 20cm wide (focal length 400mm). However, this is not the most important aspect of the  laser beam. An essential element for our lasers is the CleanSweep software, which allows you to change the frequency, intensity, shape and size of the laser beam. The combination of these variables offers efficient configurations for different applications.

Yes, our software CleanMark allows marking texts and images with Low Power and High Power Machines.

Yes, we can test laser cleaning on your material. After the test, we send you the test results, along with videos of the cleaning process.