Drying with diode lasers is a cost-efficient and environmentally friendly alternative to the widely used convective oven drying. With homogeneous area spots, even large surfaces with side lenghts of up to 2 m can be irradiated. In principle, all materials that exhibit sufficient absorption for the laser wavelength can be dried. The laser beam heats only the coating, thus yielding a targeted evaporation of the solvent or even sintering on the workpiece.