Industry

Manufacturing

Clean in place on suitable equipment with no added abrasive media. This can reduce abrasive cleanup, silica-specific compliance burden, and production downtime compared with conventional blasting, subject to the material, process, and site requirements. See the injection-mold cleaning guide and the weld and fabrication surface-prep guide.

The Challenge

The average facility experiences 25 unplanned downtime incidents per month, adding up to 326 hours of lost production per year (OxMaint 2026). Emergency repairs cost 4.8x more than planned maintenance. A significant share of this downtime traces back to surface-prep scheduling: pulling equipment offline for cleaning, waiting for blast containment setup, and dealing with media contamination of adjacent production areas.

Traditional cleaning may require a shutdown or deferral to a scheduled maintenance window. Where production and safety controls permit, laser cleaning can be performed in place and may reduce disassembly, blast-media cleanup, and disruption to adjacent equipment.

Applications

USE CASE 01

Mold Cleaning

Remove release agents and process residue from suitable molds. Where operating conditions permit, cleaning may be completed without removing the mold from the press, helping reduce maintenance interruption.

USE CASE 02

Weld Prep

Clean oxide layers and contaminants for high-integrity bonds. Critical for aerospace and automotive aluminum welding.
USE CASE 03

Tool Restoration

Clean precision tooling using a non-contact process. Controlled parameters can reduce the dimensional risk associated with grinding and abrasive methods.

Hours/year avg unplanned downtime
0
Emergency vs planned repair cost
0 x
Media contamination cleanup
$ 0
Production lines shut down
0

In-place cleaning where process conditions permit. Reduced disassembly. No abrasive cleanup. No silica exposure from blast media.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Laser cleaning operates in-place without blast media, chemical fumes, or dust clouds. Adjacent production lines continue operating. We clean molds in the press, equipment on the line, and structural steel overhead while your facility stays in production.

Molds typically need cleaning every 500-2,000 cycles depending on the material and process. Weld fixtures benefit from monthly cleaning. Structural steel in corrosive environments should be inspected and cleaned annually. Our maintenance contracts provide scheduled recurring service at locked-in rates.

Production molds (injection, compression, stamping), weld joints, heat exchangers, conveyor systems, press tooling, machine tool beds, paint line hooks, and structural steel. We clean steel, aluminum, copper, cast iron, and tool steel.

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