I have a 6kW fiber laser cutting machine. We're cutting A36 steel, which has a layer of mill scale and rust on it.
I'd like to use the machine to evaporate the mill scale and rust in specific areas (to prep for welding), so that cutting and cleaning would be done in one shot.
I'm thinking I would intentionally defocus the beam to achieve cleaning instead of cutting, and to make the beam cover a wider area for the cleaning passes. This is easy enough to test out, but my concern is that since it is not cutting through, that I may end up reflecting light back up into the cutting head, which could damage the machine.
Does anybody have experience or thoughts about this?