July, 2026- Metro-North Railroad launched a pilot program during the 2022 fall season that used a laser train to clean “leaf slime” from 12,000-plus cumulative miles of track during its initial test run. The train clears the territory at least once a day at up to 60 miles an hour. Laser cleaning also is gaining traction in other industries as agencies and manufacturers look for ways to transition away from conventional methods such as abrasive blasting, chemicals or pyrolysis.
Fabricators use handheld laser cleaning to rapidly and precisely remove surface coatings like rust and paint.
“Laser cleaning is not a new concept, but historically its adoption was slow because lasers were too expensive, unreliable and high maintenance,” says Dmitri Novikov, director of business development-aerospace for IPG Photonics. “Companies could still get the work done with the equipment they had.”
According to Novikov, several changes happened in parallel, causing a dramatic economic structural shift. First, conventional methods became problematic due to environmental regulations, skilled labor shortages and energy consumption. Second, the laser power of reliable, industrially rugged fiber lasers reached multiple kW levels, and the cost per watt came down substantially. Third, beam delivery and scanning technology matured along with application knowledge.
GROWTH POTENTIAL
“The laser source is important,” he continues, “but getting the beam to the workpiece reliably, at the right spot size, at the right scan rate, with the right pattern advanced significantly. The cleaning industry reached a tipping point for fast adoption. The growth potential for laser cleaning is huge.”
Unlike continuous wave lasers, which often created heat-related damage on delicate mate- rials, a part’s surface or bulk substrate, modern pulsed fiber lasers give cleaning operators control over parameters such as pulse energy, pulse duration, peak power, pulse repetition rates, focal spot sizes, beam profile and speed of beam rastering. Proper tuning of pulsed lasers allows a high degree of selectivity in removing contaminants or coatings without substantial heating of the bulk material. Unlike sandblasting and grit blasting, pulsed lasers provide a noncontact process that vaporizes unwanted layers of rust, paint or grease while leaving the underlying substrate undamaged. The technology is ramping up in industries across the U.S., including heavy manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, infrastructure, and food and beverage.
In automated applications, laser cleaning often reduces costs and increases throughput compared to methods that rely on abrasives and chemicals.
“Over the last 30 years, fiber lasers used in telecommunications, medical and manufacturing applications have driven breakthroughs in productivity that redefined these fields and continue to open eyes to how laser technology can be used,” Novikov says. “We’ve amassed information that is now a large library of knowledge. We have hard data to show companies why it is economical to adopt laser ablation and what the advantages are.”
The green technology uses less energy and eliminates abrasive or liquid toxic waste that needs to be contained, collected and disposed of. Laser cleaning also reduces health risks associated with sand/grit blasting or chemical exposure. Operating costs are low due to no cleaning media consumables, low energy consumption and minimal maintenance. “As the list of mainstream economically viable laser cleaning applications grows, we are poised to enter a stage of mass adoption,” he says.
Laser cleaning offers unmatched material removal precision and selectivity.
DIVERSE USES
Ships can now be cleaned underwater with lasers. The automotive industry has employed laser cleaning for uses such as degreasing of stamped parts and tire mold maintenance. The technology allows manufacturers to remove rubber, grease and residual release agents from industrial tire, plastic and glass molds without wear. Aerospace manufacturers safely strip specialized paint and coatings from aluminum alloys and composite structures. Rust and paint are removed from bridges and other infrastructure. Buildings, commuter trains and public spaces are cleaned of graffiti. The food and beverage industry is using the technology to sterilize conveyor belts and baking molds without wearing down equipment. Laser cleaning is also being used to remove soot, biological growth and burial crusts from sculptures, fossils, murals and historical artifacts while preserving the underlying stone or fine metal.
Laser cleaning systems are configured in different formats from low-watt handheld units that an operator can carry to kW-class fully automated systems. Portable systems (ranging from tens to hundreds of watts) enable maintenance, repair, touch-up and field service, introducing a wide range of users to laser cleaning.
Handheld systems are best suited for on-site projects, jobs that require mobility or the cleaning of large objects or components with unique shapes. Mid-range, operatordirected systems (typically up to 1 kW) are best suited for production environments where parts come to the system and deliver higher productivity. At the high end are fully automated industrial kW-class integrated production cells designed for high throughput. The laser is mounted on a robot arm or gantry, the workpiece is fixtured or conveyed, and the cleaning happens as part of a continuous production flow, providing consistent quality and full traceability without any operator skill dependency. Stationary, enclosed stations are better suited for batch processing of repeated shape components.
“It depends on what you are cleaning, whether you need to clean a high volume of similar parts or components that are unique,” says Novikov. “Technology platforms scale across a tremendous range of power, automation and throughput. The right solution depends on the application, the production context and the economics. A shipyard doesn’t need the same system as a medical device manufacturer, and neither of them needs what an automotive battery plant needs. The maturity of the field is reflected in the fact that purpose-built solutions exist across that entire spectrum.”
THE RIGHT FIT
“It’s important for a company to identify the materials and types of contaminants they need to remove [and] determine their estimated daily production volume and whether they need a portable manual solution or an automated production cell,” says Novikov. Companies can submit materials to IPG for sample testing and process development to verify that laser cleaning will work for a specific project. Once a company determines if their application is a fit for laser ablation, a total cost of ownership analysis can be performed to determine the ROI of replacing the incumbent process.
Cleaning may not be the only process needed. The process may dictate specific surface preparation to ready the component for the next operation such as coating or bonding. Medical implants require surface texturing to achieve desired degree of roughness. In another example, dual-purpose systems give operators the flexibility to weld and clean using the same equipment.
“Compared to abrasive blasting and chemical cleaning processes, laser ablation is safe, cost-effective and precise. We’re here to answer questions and show customers how easy it is to clean parts with sustainable green technology that adds to customers’ bottom line.”
IPG Photonics, 508/373-1100, ipgphotonics.com
