Mr. Wang, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Laser Industry, OFweek.com
Opportunities and challenges in the laser cleaning industry
Mr. Wang, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Laser Industry, shared his views on "Opportunities and Challenges of Laser Cleaning Industry", from the development and achievements of laser cleaning industry, the challenges of laser cleaning and the development opportunities faced by laser cleaning.
Early on, China's laser cleaning power is low, the root cause of this bottleneck lies in China's lack of independent research and development of high-power laser light source. To break this situation, many domestic research institutes and laser companies have invested a lot of money and manpower to carry out research and development of core devices and application processes, and many breakthroughs have been made.
From the application side, the advantages of laser cleaning are obvious, industry development has made a number of achievements. For example, a laser company in Wuhan has done a number of improvements in research and development for high-speed rail manufacturing application scenarios for laser cleaning technology. It has developed a pre-welding and post-welding cleaning technology for the welding of high-speed rail bodies, which is now widely used as an integrated cleaning and welding equipment. In terms of industry standards, in January 2022, the company led the development of two group standards for laser cleaning in the aerospace sector, filling the gap in the domestic standards system in this area.
When it comes to the problems with the widespread dissemination of laser cleaning, there are three main areas. 1. cleaning parameters need to be repeatedly explored, increasing the cost of downstream applications; 2. different cleaning mechanisms in various fields, the degree of standardisation is low; 3. cleaning efficiency has been improved, but the cleaning efficiency of complex workpieces is low, in the actual cleaning process, some workpieces are irregularly shaped, there are many complex structures and crevices and other parts that are not easy to clean.
Finally, looking to the future, the laser industry is one of the key directions in the development of high-tech industries in China, and the development of laser cleaning technology is also in line with the relevant industrial policies. In terms of policy, due to the severe form of ecological and environmental protection, laser cleaning as a "green" cleaning technology is promising; in terms of technology, the number of patent applications for inventions in the field of laser cleaning is growing rapidly. After entering the 21st century, Jiangsu University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Semiconductor Research Institute, Shandong Academy of Sciences Laser Institute, Raycus laser and a large number of research units and enterprises gradually increase the laser cleaning research, the development and accumulation of laser cleaning technology to contribute to the power, the domestic laser cleaning field of invention patent applications began to gradually rise. At the same time, laser cleaning technology has entered the "whole life cycle cost feasible" stage, to tyre mold cleaning, for example, the existing tyre mold field more environmentally friendly cleaning method for dry ice cleaning, compared to dry ice cleaning method, laser cleaning in the field of tyre mold has shown the economic advantages.
In the market, the rise of domestic lasers to drive down the price of light sources, laser cleaning equipment cost-effective advantages; application areas continue to expand, the field of large-scale equipment to become the next point of strength; industrial cleaning market is vast, laser cleaning is promising.
