Patent ID: 7633033

Claim:
A laser-based coating removal system to remove a coating from a surface, the system comprising: a. a laser source to provide a laser pulse; b. scanning optics to direct the laser pulse along a laser path to a current one of a plurality of positions within a coating removal pattern on the surface, whereby the laser pulse impinges the current position on the surface thereby ablating a portion of the coating from the current position; c. one or more light illuminators to provide a light illumination along a light illumination path, the light illumination impinging the current position on the surface; d. a photosensitive detector to receive light reflected from the surface as a result of the impinging light illumination and to measure the reflected light; and e. a color sensing path to direct the reflected light from the surface to the photosensitive detector, wherein the color sensing path includes the scanning optics and the entire color sensing path from the surface to the photosensitive detector is independent of the entire light illumination path from the one or more light illuminators to the surface.