Influence Of Spot Overlapping In Laser Paint Stripping With Moving Repetitive Pulses

Spot overlapping acts as one of the main concerns in getting ideal results in the laser paint stripping operations. In order to describe the process of paint removal with repetitively pulsed lasers in a scanning scheme, a simplified three-dimensional numerical model is developed and demonstrated to be able to present paint stripping results obtained with movable laser pulses. The influences of spatial overlapping between neighboring pulsed laser spots on the thermal distribution and on the corresponding paint removal are discussed. A series of experiments is designed, and the results agree well with the numerical simulation. It is found that a spot overlapping ratio higher than 50% is able to give uniformly heated zones and hence leads to no paint residues within the stripped region. An experimental linear dependence of laser paint stripping depth on the incident laser energy density is also obtained and may provide a guide for the parameter selection in the laser paint removal operations.