Elimination of Lubricants from Aluminum Cold Rolled Products Using Short Laser Pulses

This work presents a new technique to remove the surface impurities from the aluminum cold-worked sheets. The method consists to concentrate a short-time high-power pulsed laser on the materials surface and scan it in order to cover a desired area. Incrustations ablation is obtained as long as the fluency and the peak power are high enough to produce vaporization of the contaminated layer without affecting the material surface properties. The present problem consists in eliminating a desiccated soap of about 1 g/m² from the surface of a 6016-class aluminum alloy sheet. The soap is originated from the rolling process. The present laser method is intended to replace water washing when the piece cannot be soaked, when drying is difficult due to the geometry, or when environmental restrictions apply. Best results were obtained when the pulse length was 100 ns and the average laser power was 95 W. In these conditions, the surface was completely cleaned and the aluminum alloy did not suffer any structural modification.

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lima,M.S.F., Wagnière,J.-D., Morato,S.P., Vieira Jr.,N.D.
Format: Digital revista
Language:English
Published: ABM, ABC, ABPol 2002
Online Access:http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-14392002000200019
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!