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Lead and zinc-based paint stripping by laser

Lead-based coating removal

Historically, critical infrastructure Worldwide made from steel, is often coated with lead-based paint.

In the current day much of this infrastructure is reaching beyond its design life and requiring maintenance.  To execute maintenance engineers have previously been limited in their options to either chemical stripping or abrasive blasting for the removal of lead-based coating.

These methodes cause BIG issues and generate Problems:

  • Environmental laws require full containment to capture spent abrasive and chemical agents now contaminated with toxic paint particles from entering sensitive habitats.
  • This material must be disposed of in suitable landfills.
  • The current system is costly, operationally dangerous and often quality control is low.

Laser cleaning advantage

Our LASER-SWIPE Cleaning machines provide efficient laser cleaning to remove lead-based coatings from structures enabling engineers and their technicians to carry out maintenance work in a safe environment. When weighing up the associated project costs, Lasermach delivers also in plus a big commercial advantage to outdated alternative methods. And the technology is green!

Lead and zinc-based paint stripping using laser technology

Hazardous Coating Removal with Laser Cleaning machines

Removing lead and asbestos coatings by Laser Cleaning

Many industries have historically used lead and asbestos coatings – which means cleanup is not a simple task. Given the dangerous nature of these coatings, abatement is not a simple task and requires an extraordinary amount of protection and removal equipment.

Lasermach provides for this Laser Cleaning machines with a safe and efficient way to remove the hazardous coatings from targeted areas in your facility without resorting to the time-consuming process of environmental protection or personal protective equipment.

Lasermach’s cleaning solutions use optional integrated fume extraction and are proven to eliminate:

  • Complex containment/enclosures to contain hazardous dust
  • Clean-up of blasting grit and debris
  • Mixed hazardous waste disposal
  • Mining removal and refurbishment of coated machinery

Hazardous coatings such as lead based paints are an excellent application for laser cleaning. Insulators and sealers like asbestos caulking is another fantastic use for laser cleaning systems. Paints can be cleaned off of a variety of substrates. Metals, masonry and even wood. The most appealing benefit of using laser cleaning to remove such undesirables is the lack set up of the area you are cleaning. Using a laser cleaning system with proper fume extraction eliminates all air contamination.

Tests have been done and the the results are 1000X ppm under the legal limit of air contamination. Given that there are no chemicals or blast media, primary waste consists of the spent electricity. The disposal of the secondary waste is simply the captured fine particulate in your fume extraction filter.

Paint removal from steel structure is executed for shipyards of marine and offshore engineering. Due to environmental unfriendliness and unhealthy drawbacks of sand blasting technique, laser ablation technique is proposed as a substituting method. By absorbing high energy of the 1064 nm pulsed laser, the paint is vaporized quickly.
The ablated debris is then collected by using a suction pump. Initial metal surface of the steel is exposed when laser beam irradiates perpendicularly and scans over it. The cleaned surface fulfills the requirements of surface preparation standards ISO 8501 of SA2. The repainting can be embedded onto the laser cleaned surface to bond much more tightly. The excellent adhesion strength of 20 MPa between repainted coating and the substrate is achieved, which is higher than what is required by shipyards applications.