Recently, I’ve seen several rust removal videos. At first I thought laser sort of “scraped off” the rust, but looking closely, I see no rust being blown away or rust powder left on the table where they perform such removal. What is really happening? Does the laser gets evaporated in the air? Or is it being “melt”? I’m curious. Cheers!
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Most common metals – like steel and aluminium – are reflective, and won’t absorb any of the energy from the laser. By contrast, the rust on the surface is highly absorbent of the laser’s energy – and ‘ablates’ from the surface until the shiny metal underneath is exposed.
Note that this isn’t burning or otherwise chemically converting the rust into another metal – it just gets ‘hot’ enough to come loose and go into the air as dust, which will (eventually) gather on the workbench. It’s still iron oxide.
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