Laser repair tech?

[Arugela]

We have a bunch of floating museums with needs for repairs. Would it be possible to use lasers to repair things like how a certain non invasive surgery concept was supposed to work. (still can't find any references to it.)

The surgery concept was to basically use light, like how it went through the skin and then focus multiple beams to focus on one spot and do surgery without slicing things open. Or vice versa to use frequencies to concentrate on a single spit with one or more lasers and some other logic to make it cut on demand inside the body without breaking skin.

Could this be done with lasers/magnetics/other concepts to both scan and repair expensive large ships. Particularly easy with a power supply present. Like national power lines or say, a nuclear reactor on board. And could it in essence advance metalergic methods by allowing more control over a material to manipulate or weld or do other things. Even maybe forge alloys and whatnot spot to spot. At which point could you then build or rebuild things in existing structures to redesign or reengineer things. Say a tall building or anything you have the means to manipulate sufficiently.

I'm assuming this kind of idea could help advance concepts like what darpa is doing with their one advanced building initiative that is basically like a metal 3d printer. Or attach it to old mettle melting techniques for more advance manufacturing/repair/recycling/etc.

Edited July 16, 2023 by Arugela

[Nuke]

put the words "metal cleaning laser" into youtube. be amazed, awed, and a little scared. 

[darthgently]

44 minutes ago, Nuke said:

put the words "metal cleaning laser" into youtube. be amazed, awed, and a little scared. 

General consensus over the years is that it is fake.  I saw the first vid of that years ago so if it were real, I think it would have graduated from YouTube by now.  But it isn't like I looked into it in depth as it seemed ridiculous. Maybe I'm wrong

[kerbiloid]

The words "лазерная очистка" give a lot of commercial videos.

https://rustan.ru/stanki/lazernye_stanki/lazernaya-ochistka-metalla-ot-rjavchiny

https://www.youtube.com/@user-uk7re4jh8r/videos

Spoiler

 

 

[Nuke]

industrial lasers are very real. but i highly doubt they are cheap. but if you own a shipyard or large scale fabrication operation, it might be worth having one on site. 

Edited July 16, 2023 by Nuke

[steve9728]

Medical surgery and industrial cutting are, in fact, some kind of "subtractive manufacturing". And what you're proposing is, if I understand you correctly, some kind of "additive manufacturing". 

Then I looked for Chinese domestic research and academic article websites. It seems that this technology is a relatively mature technology. It involves melting metal powder into a pool of metal solution and curing it with a laser - not too far from 3D printing. It doesn't look like in the game that uses a laser gun to repair everything, but the laser is indeed can 3D print something through metal raw material and was already being used in aerospace equipment manufacturing. If you are interested in this, here's the link but that's full Chinese. Let Mr. Chrome helps you.

But using lasers to do something like minimally invasive or even non-invasive "medical surgery" to repair metal devices, maybe I'm not searching with the right keywords, and I'm not finding anything interesting either. Too cutting edge buddy!

Edited July 17, 2023 by steve9728

[darthgently]

10 hours ago, steve9728 said:

Medical surgery and industrial cutting are, in fact, some kind of "subtractive manufacturing". And what you're proposing is, if I understand you correctly, some kind of "additive manufacturing". 

Then I looked for Chinese domestic research and academic article websites. It seems that this technology is a relatively mature technology. It involves melting metal powder into a pool of metal solution and curing it with a laser - not too far from 3D printing. It doesn't look like in the game that uses a laser gun to repair everything, but the laser is indeed can 3D print something through metal raw material and was already being used in aerospace equipment manufacturing. If you are interested in this, here's the link but that's full Chinese. Let Mr. Chrome helps you.

But using lasers to do something like minimally invasive or even non-invasive "medical surgery" to repair metal devices, maybe I'm not searching with the right keywords, and I'm not finding anything interesting either. Too cutting edge buddy!

Additive 3D printing of metal from powder and tiny spheres is fairly mature in the west, though improvements are certain in the future

[Shpaget]

Lasers can ablate and/or fuse material that is already, they can't deposit new material.

Different materials have different absorption properties for different wavelengths so there could be instances where you can use a laser that penetrates surface material and does some work on sublayer made of some other material.

For example, electronic traces on smartphone display (while powered on, to boot):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks-lS11TIaY

On certain partially opaque materials you can set the laser up so the focus is inside the material and reaches the energy density to do the work, but on shallower layers energy density is not high enough to do it.  An example are those tacky acrylic 3d engravings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wDRXUzfZAw

Another way is to hit a specific spot from multiple sides to combine the effect. Radiation therapy for cancer is an example of this, although not with laser but with ionizing radiation.

 

23 hours ago, darthgently said:

General consensus over the years is that it is fake.  I saw the first vid of that years ago so if it were real, I think it would have graduated from YouTube by now.  But it isn't like I looked into it in depth as it seemed ridiculous. Maybe I'm wrong

Those are fiber lasers and are 100% real. I've got one in my basement. I haven't really tested it on rust and regular paint (stuff you would find on cars or railings), but it can easily remove some thin paint (maybe its powder coating, maybe it some film type thing) from aluminium business cards I have. It can mark the anodization on aluminium, engrave and cut steel, aluminium and brass. I tried to find something rusty to test just for you, but apparently I keep all my iron stuff well oiled.

[steve9728]

42 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Additive 3D printing of metal from powder and tiny spheres is fairly mature in the west, though improvements are certain in the future

Yep, the article also mentions that. The problem with both East and West is basically that the cost and technology of the stuff is more expensive compared to lathe cutting. I do think, though, that in the future, with advances in technology and increased manufacturing output, getting cheaper is a sure thing.

"Laser manipulation of something inside another substance" reminds me of x-ray non-destructive testing. Of course, this have nothing to do with this topic.

[Nuke]

one of the reasons subtractive processes are preferred with metal is that you can give it more consistent properties across a volume of stock. casting is technically additive yet it produces lower quality parts, inclusions, voids, etc. castings are also often less precise than you want and you do have to remove some material to put the surfaces into spec, but the amount of material removed is significantly less than starting it as a block and shaping it as needed, and where precision is not needed the cast surface is more than adequate. i watch a lot of machinist videos and the amount of material that ends up as chips on the floor is more than you would think.

Edited July 17, 2023 by Nuke

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

Different materials have different absorption properties for different wavelengths so there could be instances where you can use a laser that penetrates surface material and does some work on sublayer made of some other material.

A classic “Science World” demonstration of this is having a red balloon inflated inside an inflated white/transparent balloon. Hit it with a green laser and the red balloon pops while the outer balloon stays intact. Typical applications include medical uses.

20 minutes ago, Nuke said:

watch a lot of machinist videos and the amount of material that ends up as chips on the floor is more than you would think.

There’s a video of Atlas V boosters being made, with the isogrid pattern being CNC’d out of huge aluminum billets. Yeah, tons of chips that get recycled into new billets…

[Nuke]

8 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

A classic “Science World” demonstration of this is having a red balloon inflated inside an inflated white/transparent balloon. Hit it with a green laser and the red balloon pops while the outer balloon stays intact. Typical applications include medical uses.

There’s a video of Atlas V boosters being made, with the isogrid pattern being CNC’d out of huge aluminum billets. Yeah, tons of chips that get recycled into new billets…

i think ive seen that one, its crazy how much just gets turned to chips. the chips weigh more than the finished part. 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Nuke

[Shpaget]

At work, one of the parts we produce is a tube of about 50 mm in diameter (and roughly as tall) with a wall thickness of about 2 mm almost, but not quite all the way around. There are a few protruding features, which means that have to make it from solid square stock. About 90% of the material is turned to chips. Sure this is an outlier and for a larger runs it might be cheaper to have a thick walled tube custom made, but for a run of a few hundred per year, we just stock up on chip bags.