ok, i will contact them because i do use the lower powers for certain things and need it. i hope they dont give me a hard time it sat in the box for 6 months, i purchased in December.
thanks
I believe they have a year warranty… Don’t know if it’s advantageous to advise them of the fact it’s been boxed up for 6 months.
Just looked at the warranty section at the OMTech site.
1-year warranty on laser tubes of 70W and up.
Good luck, let us know.
Update, the new tube and PSU appeared to work better at first, but not consistently.
Fast forward 5 months of dealing with it on and off, I started to suspect the water chiller.
I installed my own temp sensors on the input and output water lines using ds18b20 sensors siliconed into T fittings. Now logging into home assistant (more on the later).
During this process, i cleaned the air filters on the chiller and raised the chiller up about 4 feet to sit on top on the machine, so i could see the display. I’ll probably move it back down later.
THEN I noticed the water level on my cw5200 was in the normal range, around half. I immediately had a fear that the water cooler temp sensor in the reservoir was somehow above the water line…as that would explain the behavior i was seeing for over a year.
After a test run, i confirmed the water chiller ran longer chilling cycles than before and the machine works so much better. All of the cuts are perfect on 2 hours jobs.
The lesson here is do not trust the normal level zone in your water cooler, fill it a 2nd time after you install the tube and let the tube fill, since that will lower the water level in the reservoir. Maybe everyone knows this, but no one suggested it on this thread.
Now, as for the temp sensors, i installed them on 3 machines. It’s worth noting that there is a delay when the machine actually reverses the temp direction, and the return water is hotter than the chilled, obviously.
The point here is the water exiting your tube can be several degrees C hotter than your set point on your chiller!
In my case with the tank half full, i can only imagine how hot my water was getting in the tube, and for a long time. It’s like a different machine now.
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Here are some photos of the water temp logging and install.
FYI, this graph is not real world. The first spike was before the install. when the lines come together the cooler is flowing but no laser running. When the return deviates upwards, the laser is running the test run.
Temp sensor install. The temp sensor has a gromet around it, shoved into silicone tube and filled with 2 part epoxy silicone, behind the gromet only. The tube is then installed onto the barb T fitting, and the temp sensor (inside the stainless probe) slides into the T, making sure the sensor does not go in so far that it blocks water flow. The water just passes by and can flow slightly around the temp probe.
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