Although it is widely used prior to the spraying stage to eliminate the surface contaminants and to reduce the quench stress of the splats, the preheating operation should be precisely controlled to keep the metallic substrate away from an excessive oxidation. In most cases, the brittle structure of the oxide can deteriorate the interface adhesion. The use of a nanosecond pulsed laser treatment is a powerful tool to clean the substrate surface. It is also a fundamental principle of the PROTAL^® process that combines the laser surface preparation and the thermal spraying process in a simultaneous operation. In this paper, the use of the PROTAL^® process together with a preheating stage shew that the particles splashing was drastically suppressed and the deposit adhesion was significantly improved resulting from the laser cleaning effects. The mechanism of oxide removal was also investigated.