TresClean demonstrates improvements in the surface cleanliness and hygiene of steel pipes following laser texturing.

Tresclean Partner Ecor International and Sentiero International Campus, the Research Group Company (ASTER accredited research centre specialised also in the material testing) recently completed tests to evaluate the cleanliness and hygiene of textured pipes with the Tresclean production techniques.

The surface cleanliness and hygiene of the textured pipes was evaluated using whole milk and the performance of the textured surfaces was compared with untestured surfaces. In milk soiling experiments it was found that the milk slipped away from the pipe surface more frequently on textured surfaces than on untextured surfaces. Whilst in surface cleanability test it was found that the cleanability of textured surfaces was on average 20% higher than untextured surfaces. Although further tests and independent comparisons are required these promising results to demonstrate the potential of direct laser structuring of tubular metal parts using the TresClean high throughout production techniques.

Tres Clean Achievements

In April 2016 TresClean set out to demonstrate that high throughput laser-based manufacturing using high-power lasers could be applied to produce fluid-repellent and anti-microbial metal surfaces.

In achieving this goal the consortium made technological advancements in the fields of laser physics and materials processing. Particular achievements include:

• Identification of ultrashort pulsed laser texturing as a suitable technique for producing antibacterial surfaces.
• Application of laser texturing to generate different topographies, characterized by feature size ranging from a few hundreds of nm to tens of µm.
• Identification of suitable surface topographies to reach super-hydrophobic and antibacterial effects.
• Development of a high power laser delivering 1kW of output power and >3mJ of pulse energy, including the demonstration of high-power visible (green) and UV radiations with more than 600W and 200W power respectively.
• Development of a scanning system with processing speeds of up to several hundred m/s, improved resolution and sufficient accuracy to support laser power up to 1kW.
• Upscaling of the TresClean laser texturing techniques to produce structures with a laser repetition rate of 10MHz, at a scanning speed of 200m/s in a field size of 200x200 mm.
• Transfer of nanoscale topographies on polymers by injection molding.
• Generation of functionalised surfaces on free-form components such ls metal pipes.

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