For different metal fabricators, the term “cleaning metal surfaces” has different significance. For some, the finishing of metal structures is extremely important and for some fabricator, the finishing may not be a great deal to pay attention.
That’s why the importance of metal surface cleaning is different to each. But in most cases, a quality product is something that not only has a durable construction and an efficient functionality but also a smooth finished surface to look at and feel.
This process of metal surface cleaning can be overwhelming especially for the metal fabricators which have powder coating and painting lines. This is because of the headache of pretreatment systems, which requires intense oversight that ensures the chemical creating the perfect surface for powder and paint so that they can properly adhere.
Other fabricators may do the surface with power tools and welding but they know that a clean surface requires a lot of resources. So, to make a surface perfectly smooth, a lot of resources, as well as time, is wasted. That’s why laser has been a proven an effective way to get smooth surfaces. To be honest, Laser changed the way how fabricators thought of cleaning metal surfaces.
This laser system wipes out residues, contaminants, and coatings with the help of the high-energy fiber laser source. The same type of power sources is used in laser cutting and other laser equipment in the fabrication industry. The best possible way that someone can reduce production cost is by implementing the best equipment and best process.
This process is generally meant to minimize the use of Chemical & Abrasive for cleaning the metal surfaces. The fabricator will place that part to be cleansed in the Class one enclosure and then starts the cleaning program. Once everything is set up, the machine operator will choose between a customized pattern that meat certain surface specification and a preinstalled cleaning pattern throughout the process. The machine operator can also customize the program to include different passes using different values for frequency, power, and the speed on each laser pass. He can arrange a database so that he doesn’t have to remember a metal surface cleansing job that was done previously.
Another great feat of this laser cleaning is it can clean almost any type of metal surfaces that you want, like steel, galvanized steel, stainless steel and even copper and brass. Another interesting fact about laser cleaning is it can even clean reflective surfaces like glass. Apart from metal surfaces and glass surfaces, the laser can be used to clean nonmetallic materials like rubber and plastic.
But the laser cleaning isn’t limited to the flat surfaces only. Recently, the laser is being heavily used in curved surfaces too because the cleaning units are designed in a way that can clean hard-to-reach areas of 3D objects.
Most of the laser systems have a precise cleaning head, which allows the trajectory beam to pass through a certain static path. To clean the surface, the object needs to sit in X and Y axis of the cleaning chamber and then the movements ensures that the surface is fully exposed to the laser beam. This is how you get the smooth and clean finishing to the metal surfaces.
