Laser rust removal

[Barry]

This looks like one bad ass machine. It uses a 1000 Watt laser to strip oxides, paint, oil and grease to prepare metal surfaces for work. Apparently it can be used for nuclear decontamination too  Much cleaner alternative to media blasting. Best get saving though, I've heard they're around $500k.

 

 

[Gaurav]

This is insane invention man. Imagine car under body can be cleared in an hour time.

[treks]

1000 Watts? I use a 20 milli-watt green laser as a pointer when I present astronomy lectures, and with that laser, I can burst a party balloon at 6 meters in less than a second, and light a cigarette in under 7 seconds at a distance of 1 meter. I have also accidentally sustained serious burns with it. 

Just imagine what this 1kW monster could do to the thin metal of a car body! Less powerful gas lasers are used to cut thick steel plate, but this particular laser should work well to clean gunk off ships and such though.

[Barry]

Here's a guy using it on a car to strip paint. I'd love to see the actual finish up close though. When I worked in restoration, we used media blasting to clean the shells prior to starting work and sometimes it would leave the metal distorted which could be a real pain to sort. Personally, what I find funny in this video is the guy wearing sunglasses. If a 1000 Watt laser was to touch the glass and bounce back, it would melt his eyeballs, sunglasses or no sunglasses. I find laser technology fascinating, stuff like the space elevator blows my mind and how long before someone designs a laser engine which can be used in cars?

 

 

[treks]

Much depends on the energizing medium in a laser, so I guess in this case, the medium would be some sort of crystal, rather than a gas, so the light beam is not energetic enough to melt the car's metal. 

Speaking of lasers as propulsion systems- some gas lasers are powerful enough to move pieces of space debris into other orbits. In one famous experiment about 15 years ago, a laser was pointed (from earth) at a piece of burnt-out rocket engine in orbit around earth, and after 48 hours, the orbit of the piece of space junk was changed by several km- enough to prevent it ever falling back onto the earth. So yes, with some fine tuning, we might see laser engines in cars yet.