A Laser Assisted Dry Ice Blasting Approach for Surface Cleaning

Surface cleaning processes are needed in different life cycle phases of technical products. They are important elements in manufacturing and in maintenance during usage as well as in recycling and remanufacturing. To meet the increasing requirements in product durability and functionality, the usage of compound materials and functional coatings becomes over more important. In this regard surface cleaning is an essential processes to ensure the reliability of pre-treatment and coating process. While product data are well known or can easily be determined during manufacturing and maintenance, this is not the case at the end of life cycle. To manage the lacking knowledge of the contaminants as well as to deal with the removal of worn coatings on products, highly flexible cleaning processes are needed. Usually the cleaning processes are based on conventional methods. Dry ice blasting and laser processing are two environmentally friendly alternatives with different advantages. Dry ice blasting can be used for delamination, cleaning and pre-treatment while laser processing makes a defined removal of coatings or contaminants and a surface treatment of the recycling part possible. With regard to highly adhering or hard contaminants and protective or functional coatings they have technological and economical limitations. Furthermore sensitive substrate materials may be damaged partially. The hybrid combination of both technologies offers different strategies for machining: The laser can be applied either as an energy source to intensify the thermal mechanism of dry ice blasting or as a final cleaning process. With respect to the material removal rate the hybrid machine concept shows a significant improvement compared to the stand-alonetechnologies.