Technical Cleaning with laser?

We are quoting a machine that hauls one of these cleaning lasers thru a path to clean an area where the cover bonds to the housing on an automotive sensor product. The cleaning laser with control and motion devices was in the $400K neighborhood. A tad pricey for the common garage.

 

I think the bigger ones are in the 600K range, and they are big! There's lotsa stuff attached to the other end of that handheld unit. I've got an 80W CO2 laser engraver but that wavelength doesn't do much to highly thermally conductive material - it does do nice work on wood, glass, anodized aluminum, etc.

 

Cost prohibitive for most folks who would want to go into business with the setup now but give it three or four years and the cost may come down to half that or less.
Still outside of the high demand for electricity you have no hazmat to deal with outside of the burned off residue that most likely won't be deemed as hazmat. No chemicals to get rid of an no complaints that your powder or solution caused issues with paint or bled out of crevices later. Industrial applications would still have to bear the brunt of operating costs to make it viable to offer it to car folks.

 

They go from about $80k to about $450k

 

Yeah-
80k for a 20 watt that doesn't do much.
450k for 1000 watts that does some work.

I haven't done the math,
but I wonder how many cars it will clear of every stich of paint and rust before it breaks? How many cars can a guy do in a day before he fatigued and couldn't control the gun?
A fella can get a whole lot of sand blasting done for 1/2 million bucks.

Man I'd like to have one just for cleaning all that stupid stuff, like door jambs, window channels

 

That reminds me what a pleasure it would be to zap louvered hoods, trunks etc no more tore up hands trying for that last little bit of paint in the corners of louvers.

 

I've probably wasted enough in billable time doing things that this would have breezed through. Unfortunately that invoice remains unpaid, I need to sell it to a collections company and have them chase the bum (me)...... Would be an awesome thing to have access to.