The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 19, 2024
Filed:
May. 21, 2021
Woodrow Scientific Limited, Southampton, GB;
John Redvers Clowes, New Milton, GB;
Woodrow Scientific Limited, Southampton, GB;
Abstract
Laser cleaning apparatus () comprising: a laser system () configured to output laser light having a power, a wavelength, a temporal characteristic and a divergence; a delivery cable () to deliver the laser light to a cleaning head; a cleaning head () comprising: an output aperture and output optics () configured to focus the laser light () to have a fluence at a focal plane () that is greater than an ablation threshold of a surface contaminant to be removed from a surface to be cleaned; scanning apparatus () to scan the laser light in at least one dimension across a scan region within the focal plane to cause the scanning laser light to have an effective divergence greater than the divergence of the laser light and to have a corresponding safe working distance from the output aperture determined by the effective divergence, the power, the wavelength and the temporal characteristic; and scan monitoring apparatus () to monitor the effective divergence of the scanning laser light and to generate an alarm signal () in response to determining that the effective divergence has changed.