Dry ice cleaning has a very wide range of applications in our industrial manufacturing. Commonly used in mold printing, automotive electronics, petrochemical and other industrial devices oil paint, carbon adhesives cleaning, in rust and paint removal also has outstanding applications. Is an important part of our industrial cleaning composition.

Laser cleaning is only 17 years to develop the most cutting-edge new industrial cleaning methods. In the last two years, it has also been rapidly applied to the cleaning of paint and rust removal and oil and carbon deposits in industries such as mold and automobile.

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As two cleaning methods with highly overlapping application areas, they naturally face competition for market share and product maturity. We will be followed by an in-depth comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the two cleaning methods and development prospects.

A, dry ice cleaning

The advantages of dry ice cleaning process mainly lies in the comparison with traditional chemical cleaning agents, it has most of the advantages we are familiar with.

1 cleaning process does not use chemicals, no pollution to the environment.

2 Compared with the cleaning agent, the cleaning effect of dry ice cold spray is more thorough and clean. And there is no damage to the material.

3 No need to shut down the equipment, no need to disassemble the equipment, can be online cleaning, compared with chemical cleaning agent can reduce the downtime.

4 Easy to operate, simple process links, automated operation, reducing labor costs.

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Dry ice cleaning as an alternative to chemical cleaning agents and widely used

But at the same time, the disadvantages of dry ice cleaning is also obvious: 1.

1, instead of saying “also” can be in the equipment does not stop when the hot state online cleaning, rather than that in the equipment cooling cleaning effect is not good.

Dry ice cold spraying as the use of relative temperature difference on the dirt material for embrittlement stripping process, when the equipment surface temperature is low when its cleaning effect will be relatively lower. Such as car engine combustion chamber in addition to carbon, when the vehicle engine temperature is low not only is not easy to clean, but also pay special attention to easily produce condensation water into the engine.

2, strict operating environment requirements. Dry ice blasting grinding cleaning when the danger generated requires the need to wear the necessary safety protection devices.

As the noise level generated by dry ice blasting grinding usually exceeds 120 dB (A), close to the sound of aircraft engines, so staff must wear hearing protection devices. Dry ice temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius require gloves to prevent frostbite hazards from dry ice particles, and helmets, face shields and safety goggles to protect the eyes from splashing particles.

At the same time, there is a risk of asphyxiation when used in a relatively unopened environment. When the volume fraction of carbon dioxide in the air is 1%, people will feel dizzy and palpitating; when 4%-5% feel dizzy. 6% or more will make people confused and gradually stop breathing and die. Therefore, it is necessary for the personnel involved in spraying and cleaning to wear a CO2 detector and to decide whether a light or even heavy respirator is needed depending on the amount of dust generated or the CO2 concentration.

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Strictly protective devices must be worn, and there are certain operational risks

3. High cleaning cost. Dry ice cleaning machine usually needs to be equipped with dry ice storage tank, dry ice making machine, air compressor and air storage tank.

Or take cleaning engine carbon as an example, it takes about 7kg air compressor and 3.5L capacity air tank to clean a car’s carbon normally. And dry ice as a consumable unit cost is very high, as an ordinary consumer in the 4S store to carry out a carbon removal price of about 400-700; and as a business user, the domestic ranking of about 20-30 tire factory using dry ice cleaning process a year of consumables costs close to 800-1.2 million, the operating costs are very high.

At the same time, experience shows that a number of ice placed for many days, its density will decline, thus reducing the cleaning effect. Therefore, more dry ice is needed to clean a given area. Using freshly made dry ice makes cleaning faster and more efficient. This is why it is important to use the newest dry ice possible for dry ice blast cleaning. In addition, dry ice is constantly sublimating, which means that after one day, only about 92 kg of dry ice pellets are left from the original 100 kg, so dry ice usually needs to be stored in a strictly cold environment.

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Dry ice cleaning equipment is often a wide range of equipment

Second, laser cleaning

Laser cleaning as a new industrial cleaning method, it is in the advantages of dry ice cleaning to do more than dry ice cleaning, and to make up for the shortcomings of dry ice cleaning, the application is also more extensive. It can be said that the dry ice cleaning is an upgraded and enhanced version, the best alternative version.

Laser cleaning is through light ablation so that the contaminants are heated by laser energy and instantaneous evaporation or sublimation vaporization.

As a new technology to replace traditional cleaning, laser has advantages that cannot be matched by traditional means.

No need to use any chemicals and cleaning solutions; no photochemical reaction, no noise and environmental pollution; no mechanical stress, zero loss of precision instrument parts; no damage to the health of the operator, easy to achieve automatic control, to achieve remote control cleaning.

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Laser cleaning and dry ice cleaning process comparison

In addition to doing the above advantages, laser cleaning is currently more difficult to accept the elements of the price: excluding no independent research capabilities, quality assurance of small workshops, several well-known domestic laser cleaning R & D manufacturers of the smallest power laser cleaning machine starting price of more than 50,000, high-powered cleaning equipment is often hundreds of thousands, the most sophisticated equipment market price of millions.

As an iteration of the new product, on the one hand, the market has a deep business dealings with the old way of cleaning and a long time to use inertia, and the familiarity and trust of laser cleaning machine is still in the process of establishing; on the one hand, as a high precision industry just started, the strength of the laser cleaning manufacturers on three or four, can not provide as large as the dry ice cleaning industry coverage network. In this case, the high cost of the first investment is undoubtedly discouraging.

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Laser cleaning has advantages, but it takes time to be accepted by the market

But in fact, if we will be cleaning costs according to the financial costing way, converted into adult depreciation costs will find: the total cost of laser cleaning is basically the purchase cost, the subsequent use of consumption only power supply, can be negligible; and dry ice cleaning cost composition on the cost of consumables accounted for a large proportion. It can be said that with the increase in the use of the year, the more substrates need to be cleaned, the more frequent cleaning, the more expensive the use of dry ice cleaning, and laser cleaning is more cost-effective.

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With the rapid development of the laser cleaning industry, I believe that in the next few years will be familiar with the market and accepted as an alternative to traditional cleaning and dry ice cleaning of the most efficient cleaning methods.