Workshops on laser cleaning

Laser cleaning workshops in Australia

A series of laser cleaning workshops is being jointly organised
jointly by the Australian War Memorial and CSIRO, and kindly hosted
by the Australian War Memorial, Art Gallery of Western Australia,
Museum Victoria and Artlab Australia. The workshops will be held in
Canberra, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide in October/November 2006.

Registrations for these workshops MUST be received by Friday 14 July
2006.

This series of workshops has been organized to give conservators in
or near Australia the opportunity to trial an Nd:YAG laser cleaning
system for themselves. The workshops will demonstrate the Compact
Phoenix laser produced by Lynton Lasers of the UK, which is a new,
relatively low cost system.  In addition, if sponsorship becomes
available, the Quantel Laserblast 50 will also be demonstrated.

Laser cleaning was first developed for architectural restoration,
and Nd:YAG lasers in particular have been used for conservation
cleaning in Europe and the UK since the early 1990s. The key
advantages of laser cleaning are:

    *   absence of chemicals and water

    *   ability to clean different materials in situ (without
    removal or disassembly)

    *   ability to clean without touching the surface, avoiding
        abrasion, tide marks and contamination with hazardous
        materials

    *   high precision and selectivity in cleaning

Each one-day workshop will include a half-day theory session
(covering general system use, cleaning procedure, system maintenance
and security issues) and a half-day hands-on session. Samples will
be provided to help participants get a feel for tuning and using the
laser, and participants are also encouraged to bring samples from
their own collections to trial.

The workshops are $AU385 per person. However, as mentioned above,
they will *only* be held if sufficient registrations are received by
Friday July 14, 2006.  Hire of the laser *must* be confirmed on this
date and can only go ahead if it is covered by paid registrations.

For more information and registration forms, please contact:

    Alison Wain
    Australian War Memorial
    alison.wain [at] awm__gov__au

    Deborah Lau
    Division of Manufacturing and Infrastructure, CSIRO
    deborah.lau [at] csiro__au

Alison


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 20:2
                   Distributed: Monday, July 3, 2006
                        Message Id: cdl-20-2-014
                                  ***