Many Italian cities are like beautiful open-air museums. It’s the close proximity to such extraordinary old buildings that adds to the excitement of visiting places like Florence. But generations of visitors have left an unwanted legacy, many of these ancient walls are defaced by graffiti. Finally our Group has stepped in to help. It has designed a special laser that can remove graffiti without damaging the surfaces which are being cleaned. El.En Group (which DEKA is one of the main subsidiary compalight for art has donated the tool to an organization of volunteers, called “Angeli del Bello” (Angels of Beauty), and they have used it to clean the Old Bridge of Florence.
Their aim is in fact to clean and preserve Italy’s cultural heritage from vandals. When used properly, the laser doesn’t damage the surface on which it intervenes. The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) is a symbol of Florence. Ponte Vecchio wasn’t even destroyed by the Nazis, it is one of the few bridges preserved in history, therefore it has a very important symbolic role. Florentines care a lot about it. Walls are sandstone made. The company’s General Manager Paolo Salvadeo said: “The laser used by the Angels of Beauty, the one we donated to them, is a last generation fibre laser. This Blaster is particularly powerful and it has a fairly big laser spot, scan size, and is therefore particularly suitable for cleaning big surfaces, in fact it is mainly used to remove graffiti, writing by vandals or even black crusts from large surfaces, such as the surfaces of buildings or open-air monuments. The laser is a very special instrument for this kind of cleaning because it preserves the original coating and important surfaces, it’s very selective: when it meets a surface that it mustn’t touch, it is reflected off this surface”.
This laser, used for the conservation of art, is designed by the DEKA R&D Department (El.En Group). The news of the laser Blaster, used for cleaning the Old Bridge of Florence, went all around the world, from the USA to Africa, to Middle East, passing through Europe, Asia, and reaching the farest region of our geoide: New Zealand.
