Hackaday: If you’ve worked with steel or iron, you will be very familiar with rust. You will have an impressive armoury of wire brushes and chemicals to deal with it, and your sandblasting guy is probably in your speed-dial list.
We’ve had more than one Hackaday reader contact us of late with videos showing an apparently miraculous handheld laser unit effortlessly stripping away rust, and leaving a near-perfect surface with little mess. Can it be real, they ask, is it an internet hoax? After all if you have done battle with the dreaded iron oxide you’ll know there is no miracle fix to the problem, however you deal with it there has traditionally been hard work involved.
4 comments:
What has technology come to? This is amazing! It comes off so easily. It makes me wonder how this technology really works- does it blast the rust into such small particles that it essentially evaporates or is there residue that shoots everywhere. How does it only take off the rust? That last question is probably due to the instability of rust compared to the strength of steel. But it even took off the rust from around the raised design and made it beautiful again.
I wonder how long it will be before this gets into the mainstream, and overseas from Germany. The actual tool looks rather clunky, though it does so much that it has to be big. I wonder how heavy it is, and how expensive- the article just said it was too pricy. What is its capability for complex shapes that aren’t as flat and smooth as the grate in the video- like a stack of gears like you would see on a bike? I look forward to hearing more about this in the future.
This is a really interesting technology, and I’m sure many people have some uses for it, but I’m not sure how often we’d be using a tool to laser remove rust in our scene shop. The tool makes sense for people who are planning on doing a lot of salvage work, if you go around collecting old scrap metal or are hunting for lost American treasures in people’s garages, then this would probably be a must have. Instead, for us, I can see this as a tool that it’s an even when we take it out. We’d find some reasons to use it, but in terms of a regular purpose for it, the only thing I can imagine it might be useful for is prepping steel to be welded. If it removes oxidation from aluminum as well as steel, it could also be very helpful in preparation for welding aluminum. Regardless, it’s a really cool tool and I’d like to see where this type of technology goes.
I have little to no laser removal experience, especially when it comes to rust removal. I do know that oxygen is a killer when it comes to specific steals. Not only does it weaken the composition of the metal but it also makes it look bad. Some of the questions I have for the product are if it will do anything to the structural integrity of the metal and if it works on all types of rust. I also want to know if this machine is considered to be safe, just the thought of being exposed to a laser of this power makes me wonder if there is any stray radiation that is harmful? I have a feeling that this German company will have problems getting their production into a country like America. This all being said I think this is a very cool idea and if it in fact works like it does in the video I can see it being a popular item. I can also see it being someone’s full time job to just take this and remove the Brooklyn Bridge of all its rust.
This video was really making its rounds on Facebook. I saw it shared by people who I would expect to be interested in the technology and use, and by people I did not expect who were amazed at how satisfying it was to watch a perfect strip of rust just disappear. As someone said, “Its like power washing but better.” I think it is really cool that there is a tool that can literally strip away layers of material. I wonder if the laser could remove paint or mill scale. This tool might not be super useful in our industry just because we do not often find ourselves faced with rust. If you store your steel outside, then maybe, but it seems as if we order material as needed and do not have things sitting around. I also think most of our building takes place in controlled environments and is coated if it is going to a non controlled environment. I am sure, however, that we could find some use…so…lets get one!
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