In recent years, the rapid development of laser industry in China, a wave of domestic replacement. On the one hand, domestic manufacturers focus on the field of higher power charge, the 10,000-watt laser opened the door to application. On the other hand, laser technology is accelerating the replacement of traditional processes in high value-added areas such as cladding, cleaning and welding, and new tuyere is coming!
The first national standard began to develop, the next 100 billion market is opening
On April 20th, the "green manufacturing laser surface cleaning technical Specifications" project launch meeting was held in Wuhan, from the aviation, aerospace, orbital, machinery, electric power, national defense and other fields a total of 23 units of expert representatives attended the meeting, focusing on the discussion of laser surface cleaning technology national standard outline and draft. As a representative of the laser manufacturer, Jept is also deeply involved in the development of standards, improving technical specifications and process parameters with customers. The standard is expected to be released in the second half of next year, which will fill the domestic gap and further regulate the healthy development of the industry. Relevant data show that the potential demand of the domestic laser cleaning market alone exceeds 60 billion yuan, and the global demand is more than 100 billion yuan. Once the market matures, the domestic laser industry will gain a huge incremental market. To this end, industry chain enterprises are stepping up the layout!
For a long time, the surface treatment capacity of China's manufacturing industry is far behind the production, which greatly restricts the process of manufacturing industry from big to strong. With the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Strategic Plan, especially high-end manufacturing and energy conservation and emission reduction, the demand for advanced technology is becoming more and more urgent. In terms of surface treatment, the domestic technology and process need to be upgraded.
Traditional cleaning processes such as mechanical friction cleaning, chemical corrosion cleaning, strong impact cleaning, high-frequency ultrasonic cleaning and other methods, not only long cleaning cycle, difficult to achieve automation, harmful to the environment, and can not reach the ideal cleaning effect, can not well meet the needs of fine processing. Relatively speaking, laser cleaning is a more efficient and environmentally friendly process, with no pollution, no consumables, low cost, high efficiency, no contact, no stress, no damage, good controllability, can be selected precision cleaning, cleaning difficult to reach the dangerous area and other advantages, is challenging the traditional process.
Laser cleaning technology was born in the 1980s, to the early 1990s really into industrial production, and gradually replace the traditional cleaning method. Due to the relatively limited technical level and manpower input in the early stage, the overall development of the laser cleaning market is slow. Since 1998, laser cleaning technology ushered in the first wave of development, mainly led by European and American countries. During this period, laser cleaning applications focus on metal surfaces such as aircraft fuselage paint removal, mold surface oil removal, engine interior carbon removal and joint surface cleaning before welding. Adapt Laser and Laser Clean All from the U.S., ElEn Group from Italy, Rofin from Germany, and Quantel from France have invested heavily to corner the market.
In contrast, laser cleaning technology started late in China, and only a few universities such as Xi 'an Jiaotong University, Dalian University of Technology, Nankai University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences carried out some research work in the early stage. It was not until 2011 that a few applications, such as restoration, were tried. Under the influence of environmental protection and emission reduction policies, the domestic industrial laser cleaning market gradually opened in 2016, and ushered in a round of attention in 2018. Upstream laser manufacturers, such as Jept, began to invest in process development and introduce laser cleaning light sources and portable cleaning solutions to the market, and began to test the water of the laser cleaning market.
In terms of specific applications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering professor, doctoral director Wang Chunming believes that there are three main laser cleaning market: one is to replace the existing industrial cleaning (chemical cleaning and ultrasonic), the market size of more than 100 billion, at least 30% can be replaced by laser cleaning, about 30 billion; The second is to replace manual grinding, which can become the standard equipment of every manufacturing workshop, about 10 billion yuan; Third, new development and application fields: such as cultural relic cleaning, building cleaning, street cleaning, etc., the market size is about 20 billion yuan.
From the perspective of market size alone, the laser cleaning field is undoubtedly a very attractive gold mine for the increasingly fierce competition in the domestic laser industry. To this end, JPT, Raycus, Max, HG laser, Han's Laser, Herolaser and other manufacturers are continuing to increase the investment in market promotion, accelerate the application of ecology.
Breakthrough core light source, boost laser cleaning application popularization
From the perspective of industrial development, domestic laser cleaning industry lags behind European and American countries for a long time, the most important reason is the limitation of the core light source. The laser industry in European and American countries started early and dominated the industrial laser application market for a long time, occupying the world's most important market share. Of course, there are also more resources invested in laser cleaning and other emerging markets, thus forming the first mover advantage.
In recent years, as domestic laser manufacturers continue to break the foreign monopoly in the field of core light source, which has brought a sharp drop in the price of laser, which has also created conditions for the development and application of domestic laser cleaning equipment. On the other hand, sheet metal cutting market competition has become extremely hot, domestic manufacturers urgently need to find new growth points, in order to seek differentiated competition. Driven by multiple factors, the domestic laser cleaning industry began to enter the fast lane.
Solve industrial problems and empower the upgrading of manufacturing industry
Because the scene involved in the surface treatment is very complex, and the composition and structure of the object surface attachment is different, the mechanism of the laser and it is also different, which leads to the laser cleaning is not like cutting, marking and other applications are easy to promote, need enterprises to have a strong process research and development ability. In addition, laser cleaning also has a single, how to use a laser to achieve different matrix material cleaning, for laser manufacturers is also a very big challenge.
From the current progress, although domestic laser cleaning equipment continues to break through in power, and gradually began to realize the replacement of high power field, but there are not many truly mature equipment, most of which are still in the stage of experimental adjustment. "Large-scale industrial application of laser cleaning equipment, stability and automation are higher requirements, need to be considered from the laser, motion control, laser and other aspects and optimization. "Leveraging our expertise in platforming technologies, the company will continue to work closely with upstream suppliers and downstream customers to optimize designs and accelerate the adoption of laser cleaning technology in high-end manufacturing."
Besides, it takes a certain period for any advanced technology and process to be accepted by the market. From the perspective of the market performance in 2020, as Jept and other manufacturers continue to increase investment and upgrade iterative products, the domestic enthusiasm for laser cleaning market is slowly rising, and the attention of the upstream and downstream industry chain is becoming more and more high. In addition, the establishment of the first national technical standards will further standardize the domestic laser cleaning market and lay a foundation for the further opening of downstream application ecology.