Heavy industry is the whole of large and heavy equipment and facilities. P-Laser is active in different segments of the heavy industry, for example steel facilities, train production and shipyards.

The train industry uses laser cleaning primarily as a decoating solution. Old train carriages need to be repainted once in a while, and especially very old carriages are finished with lead-paint or Cr6-components.

These paints are very toxic and should be handled with the greatest care. Laser cleaning offers a controlled solution for this problem, making it easier to get rid of the toxic dust and fume with a good vacuum system.

Best solution:

High Power systems can clean larger surfaces in a shorter timespan.

Multiple applications for laser cleaning can be found on shipyards.

A lot of surface cleaning applications need to be considered:

• Spot repair or spot preparation
• Weld or glue preparation
• Removal of light rust on uncoated areas
• Non Desructive Testing (NDT)

Best solutions:

Low Power series for small operations: spot repair, NDT, etc.
High Power series for weld preparation, rust removal, etc.

The offshore industry is bound to follow very strict environmental regulations. If they want to clean or repair certain areas the traditional way, they need an encapsulation of the area, to make sure no cleaning waste (like sand or chemicals) can enter the water.

For this encapsulation, they often have to shutdown the complete system or the complete area, creating gigantic losses. Laser cleaning does not need an additive material for cleaning and can be used without any isolation.

Best solution:

High Power systems

The majority of laser cleaning applications can be found in the process and production industry. It is very easy to implement a laser cleaning system in-line, but a lot of our laser are used manually so they can be deployed in different areas of the factory. The laser cleaning applications used in process & production facilities are:

• Surface cleaning
• Mould cleaning
• Weld cleaning
• Marking

Their main advantages are: a reduced production time, a clean solution in contrast to the traditional methods, a very versatile system, etc.

Best solutions:

Low, Mid and High Power systems all find their way to process & production lines.

One of the biggest challenges when working in the nuclear industry, is getting rid of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is very dangerous and expensive. It’s obvious that reducing nuclear waste can reduce the costs radically, and laser cleaning can be the solution in this case.

When a nuclear system has to be disassembled, radioactivity can be found everywhere: in the walls, the steel structures, devices, etc. Laser cleaning can reduce the radioactivity in for example steel structers to up to 70%, because almost all of the radioactivity is located in the top layer of the structure. Same story goes for concrete walls or lead beams, laser cleaning reduces the radioactive values drastically.

Another huge advantage is the lack of waste that is introduced during the cleaning operation. Traditional methods create a lot of ‘cleaning waste’, while laser cleaning only creates a radioactive dust, that can be captured and isolated very easily.

The semiconductor industry has found its way to laser cleaning because of the need for process preparation. For example: during the production process of the printed circuit boards (PCB’s), the PCB has to be tinned.

For this process, the PCB has to be completely pure. During the production process, flash is introduced on the sides of some of the components. Laser cleaning is able to remove this flash, before it enters the tinning bath.

Due to this, the quality of the PCB is improved and stabilized, making sure every PCB has the same properties over and over again.

Another possible application in the semiconductor industry is marking. Marking via laser technology is very precise and fast, so our lasers are able to mark the smallest texts or images at very high speeds.

Best solution:

Low Power lasers provide the desired precision and speed for these processes.

Hygiene is, of course, a key factor in the medical industry. In the so called Cleanrooms no dust or other moist is allowed. The benefit of laser cleaning in this case, is the fact that it creates very little waste, and that the waste can be carried away in a controlled manner.

Another application for laser cleaning in the medical industry is the cleaning of large tanks. These tanks are usually filled with chemical materials, but need to be cleaned once in a while.

The advangtage of laser cleaning is the fact that the walls of the tanks are not affected by the laser. The roughness stays the same, while the chemical residue is completely removed.

A third application in the medical industry can be found in marking the medical tools. Laser marking is fast and durable, thus making it an excellent solution for this application.

Best solutions:

Low Power systems for small cleaning and marking.
High Power lasers if maintenance work needs to be done fast.