Continuous laser VS pulsed laser, how to choose for laser cleaning applications?
In the field of laser cleaning, fiber lasers have become a good choice for laser cleaning light sources with higher reliability, stability and flexibility.
As the two major components of fiber lasers, continuous fiber lasers and pulsed fiber lasers firmly occupy the leading market positions in macro material processing and precision material processing respectively. For emerging laser cleaning applications, there are different opinions on whether continuous lasers or pulsed lasers should be used. Two types of laser cleaning equipment using pulsed and continuous lasers have also appeared on the market. Many industrial end users do not know how to choose when choosing.
Experiments have shown that both continuous lasers and pulsed lasers can remove paint from the surface of materials to achieve the effect of cleaning. Under the same power conditions, the efficiency of pulsed laser cleaning is much higher than that of continuous lasers. At the same time, pulsed lasers can better control heat input to prevent the substrate temperature from being too high or micro-melting. Continuous lasers have price advantages, and the efficiency gap with pulsed lasers can be made up by using high-power lasers, but high-power continuous light has greater heat input and the degree of damage to the substrate will also increase.
Therefore, there is a fundamental difference between the two in terms of application scenarios. For applications with high precision, strict control of substrate temperature rise, and no damage to the substrate, such as molds, pulsed lasers should be selected. For some large steel structures, pipelines, etc., due to their large size and fast heat dissipation, the requirements for substrate damage are not high, so continuous lasers can be selected.