Cleanroom for rapid laser maintenance

Effective immediately: Maintenance and repair of laser sources in the new cleanroom in Shanghai.

With the increasing number of installed laser systems, the demand for local service is also rising. LPKF has now opened a new repair and maintenance center for laser sources in Shanghai, from which customers across Asia will benefit in the future.

In the past five years, LPKF Laser & Electronics AG has nearly doubled its sales – primarily with laser systems produced in Asia. Almost all of these systems operate 24/7, with the majority installed in China. Due to strict customs regulations for high-tech components, it is becoming increasingly difficult to import spare parts or export laser sources for maintenance. Ultimately, the logistics effort burdens the customer – it costs a lot of time and money.

For more effective customer service, LPKF has brought together laser specialists at the Shanghai location and installed a repair and maintenance center. The centerpiece is a 76 sqm cleanroom. "This allows us to bypass strict import and export requirements for laser components, reduce logistics efforts on both sides, and respond much faster to customer needs. This also reduces inventory, which is particularly advantageous for expensive components that require regular maintenance, significantly impacting the total cost of ownership for customers," explains Nils Heininger, Head of the Cutting & Structuring Laser Business Unit at LPKF.

The 76-square-meter cleanroom meets ISO 8 cleanliness standards and operates on the laminar airflow principle. An airlock with protective clothing ensures no external contamination occurs. Five workstations for laser repair meet ISO 5 cleanliness standards, with a maximum of 100,000 fine particles (≥ 0.1 µm) per cubic meter of air. They are equipped with laminar flow units.

The cleanroom started trial operation in January 2013. Since then, LPKF has been repairing and maintaining laser sources for the laser cutting systems of the PCB Equipment product line, the ProtoLaser-U series, as well as the processing units of the Fusion3D laser systems.