Something to drool over:

[1project2many]

No, it's not a finished truck. It's not even a project truck. It's a tool to remove rust. And paint. And dang near anything else that's a problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fR_aTRiw6k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ_90920Zbg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NCDqpKeNHA

[mr48chev]

I'd think that right now that setup is going to cost serious money. On the other hand a shop that had the money to invest in it could probably Make it pay for it's self if it was kept busy.

Stripping mega layers of paint off a cab or body while using no consumable materials and having no mess that can't be swept or vacuumed up or removing rust from anything that is rusted with no mess outside of what you need to sweep up and no contamination worries on the metal would be a big plus.

[_Ogre]

cool, but i'd want a cnc robot arm to hold/scan the laser

[Advanced Design]

Wouldn't there be some kind of residual output? Smoke, fumes or something? Doesn't look like it and at same time matter doesn't just disappear.

[1project2many]

I spent a few minutes reading about this at lunch. The guys at the shop were laughing as I tried to figure out how many lasers I'd need to do this. The oxides and rust burn up. If you watch the videos you might see some smoke from time to time. I believe there's plenty of compressed air directed at the burn area, like a plasma cutter, so what actually burns ends up going "away."

I can see a need for a robot arm. Funny, I was watching videos of cars assembled at Ford and it's eerie to see all the robots working and very few people around. What would our grandfathers think if they knew we would have machines building machines?

[dwcsr]

if you look at video 2 at about 1:14 you see that the vapors vacuumed back into the gun and into that refrigerator sized machine.