90W RECI W2 laser tube outputs concentric circles

[Onedy (Eduard)]

I’ve received the new laser I purchased. It’s a 90W RECI W2 laser. I initially thought I had bought the best, but now I think I might be one of the unlucky ones…

It turns out it has what I believe to be a defective laser beam, as it outputs a laser beam in the form of concentric disks (TEM20 ?). Please take into consideration that 64% is the max power that I can feed the tube with.

This happens at both low and high power (I read in this forum that it’s normal to produce these disks at low power, but in my case, it also happens at high power, although they are merged).
Can someone confirm if the laser is defective?

I’ve aligned the mirrors and it does focus on a point seemingly correctly, but it doesn’t have as much power as my previous tube. Before, I could cut a 5 mm thick acrylic with 23% power and 6 mm/s, while now it barely cuts it with 38% power and 6 mm/s. Additionally, the engraving quality on acrylic is terrible: the scan lines are interrupted (even when engraving at 17%), not all the details are visible in white… I believe it’s because the focused laser point isn’t of good quality.

I have to mention that since the laser tube arrived first, I tested it right away (as if the product is defective, I need to report it within the first day of receiving it) using a black MYJG80W power supply, only doing a few pulses at low power (14% and 18%), and the result was the same.

Now that I’ve received the blue DY-13 power supply, I’ve tested again, and the results are what I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this post.

I’ve contacted Cloudray, and they keep repeating that it’s not recommended to use a power supply with more than a 20W difference because it could damage the laser tube. However, there’s not more than a 20W difference, at most it’s 10W, or up to 20W if we consider peak power. And to be honest, I don’t think that a few pulses from the MYJG80W can damage this 90W tube…

Can someone advise me on how to proceed with Cloudray?

[soniclab (Jeremy Hutchinson)]

@Onedy

Can someone advise me on how to proceed with Cloudray

After looking at a bunch of videos and reading up on your hardware I think this video below may be relevant… I would try and get a replacement tube.

CO2 Laser Firing Rings // What does it mean?!

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Do a burn at m1… this will show exactly what’s coming out of the tube… don’t blow a hole through the target… you want a lighter brown going to dark in the center… You are looking for the power distribution to be as close to a Gaussian distribution… which looks like this…

You will be looking at it from the Z axes…

I do mine like this…

It appears it’s not in TEM00 mode or resonance…

I’m afraid the tube is toast… Cloud Ray should ship you a new one… show them the burn at m1.

Do the burn, lightly, take a photo and tell them it’s not in TEM00 mode. There is nothing you can do at your end…

If you want to post it here, we can suggest if you want more/less burn or to ship it to them as is… It’s clearly failing.

@Onedy

DY-13 power supply

You might know what this is and what the specifications of this are, but it’s very helpful to include a link to the device so we can check it out… Otherwise we have to look for it…

Why did you change out the lps?

---

Cloud Ray is a very nice company, but they are based in China and therefore act a lot like most of these Chinese companies…

Why are you messing with the laser power supply (lps)? If it’s new, you shouldn’t be there unless they ask you to…

I have messed with my lps quite a bit. I have a 60W lps supply in my 50W machine from OMTech. Since it’s really a 40W tube, it’s a 50% gain over the one that should be there…

If it’s setup properly it should not harm your tube, especially if you keep the test power down.

Mine seems to have a quicker response time. Which makes sense.

An lps is passed or failed on the response time to reach 90% placarded voltage =< 0.1mS. A supply with a higher voltage will reach lase potential before one with a smaller voltage…

Make sense…

I wouldn’t argue with them… just get them to replace your tube and explain to me why you are fiddling around with the lps in a new machine…

Good luck

[Onedy (Eduard)]

Thank you for your detailed responses!

I reached out to Cloudray and they have been requesting multiple videos from me. I sent them one, they replied that it’s not sufficient, and asked for another. This cycle continued for 2 weeks, and they ended up requesting around 6 videos.

They insisted that I send videos testing the laser at maximum power (28 mA). I explained that at this power, the concentric rings are less visible due to merging, but they are most visible at 36% power. Eventually, I sent videos at both power levels. However, their response is that they don’t see any issue with the laser: “The engineers and manufacturers have carefully reviewed the several test videos you provided, and it is indeed impossible to determine the problem with the laser tube from them.”

I also argued that I engrave at 14% ~ 6mA, and the problem occurs at this current, not at 28mA.

I’m feeling quite disheartened. If I request a refund, they will only reimburse the product price, not the shipping fee (which was €200) nor the customs fee (150€). I’m losing 350€ + the cost of not operating for 3 weeks (for now).

What a terrible experience, both in terms of customer treatment and after-sales service!

Some images:
TEM20 in acrylic in 3D:

Circular beam shape:

Comparison with my previous laser tube:

Unstable beam:

Was supposed to be this:

[Onedy (Eduard)]

my 3 years old laser tube works better than this new RECI tube… and they don’t see a problem, it feels like a joke.

They’re requesting tests with parameters that won’t reveal the issue!

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Did you go to their support site?

I’d post there with links to all the videos and see if a little bit of publicity might help them see it more your way.

---

I would make a point of the fact that you are using it within specifications, it should work across the normal range.

Nobody, including you runs one of these at 100% power. Seem a rather poor technical approach.

It’s clearly a problem that you will have to resolve before it will perform correctly.

I would bet it doesn’t align properly. If that’s the case, have them help you align it, which probably can’t be done correctly because of this…

The only real recourse is to be a squeaky wheel and hope they decide to fix it.

Some vendors seem to count on you giving up hope and writing it off. Cloud Ray is supposed to be a good vendor, they got some of my money…

Good luck

[Onedy (Eduard)]

@jkwilborn

Did you go to their support site?

I’d post there with links to all the videos and see if a little bit of publicity might help them see it more your way.

---

I would make a point of the fact that you are using it within specifications, it should work across the normal range.

Nobody, including you runs one of these at 100% power. Seem a rather poor technical approach.

Thank you for your suggestions. I’ve implemented all of them and posted here: 90W RECI W2 laser tube outputs concentric circles - Laser Tube - Cloudray Laser

@jkwilborn

It’s clearly a problem that you will have to resolve before it will perform correctly.

I would bet it doesn’t align properly. If that’s the case, have them help you align it, which probably can’t be done correctly because of this…

The only real recourse is to be a squeaky wheel and hope they decide to fix it.

Do you mean aligning the 3 external mirrors or aligning the internal mirrors of the laser tube? The images I uploaded are directly from the output of the laser tube. Can they help me align the internal mirrors?

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

@Onedy

help me align the internal mirrors

NO, but it may make them realize it’s really broken and they need to fix it.

Go through a good and accurate (best you can) alignment and when you can’t align it, ask them nicely for help.

I don’t think you will be able to align it properly and it won’t be maintained… as the TEM mode changes, so do it’s characteristics of the resulting output…

When mine failed, I had to align it daily to be able to cut and only in a restricted area.

But you should at least give it a try…

This is a good video on alignment…

If you have questions, post’em here…

Good luck

[Onedy (Eduard)]

After persistently requesting a replacement, Cloudray answered that in order to receive a replacement tube, I would need to pay an additional $200. But I don’t want to pay another $200 plus customs fees (€150) just because they sent me a defective tube and because RECI doesn’t want to admit that their product is faulty! Their decision was based on the reasoning in these messages:

• “the RECI manufacturer does not agree to compensate for this laser tube because the provided video does not meet their after-sales requirements.”
• “according to the video, engineers and manufacturers have determined that the output and spot of the laser tube are normal.”

Their stipulation was that I submit a video of the laser firing at maximum power (28mA) for 5-10 seconds on a 5mm acrylic sheet located at the tube’s output, in order to observe the resulting pattern.

Although the pattern at max. power resembled a somewhat conical shape as the one in @jkwilborn’s post, there was still a noticeable merged half ring that RECI seemed to overlook.

These conditions strike me as rather impractical for “after-sales requirements,” given that most engraving occurs at lower power levels and the issues arise during actual engraving operations.

This is outrageous; it almost seems like a conspiracy!

[myerswoodshop (Ben Myers)]

Hey, I made the original video posted here and have had more lasers with the same issue.

I know this will sound crazy, but flush the system with two gallons of diluted water.

Then put in a fresh 3rd gallon after the flush.

Try shooting a pulse again after the flush out and fresh water. See if it’s still a circle or if it’s a dot.

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Watched it twice, the video didn’t say anything about draining the coolant… could you advise me where in the video it advises flushing the system coolant?

I am at a complete loss how this could effect beam quality, other than it conducting some of the high voltage or ?

This is more of a technical description of TEM mode states by Edmund Scientific…

Laser Resonator Modes

If coolant does affect this, myself and others would love to know how…

However, it’s a nice plug for Aeon laser support. I wish more people that just want to use a machine would look at this more realistically.

I’m very disappointed with Cloud Rays reaction on this… I think this makes number 3, in less than 2 months that I’ve seen where they have refused this kind of legitimate claim.

[myerswoodshop (Ben Myers)]

The video doesn’t, but I have a monport with the same issues and found replacing the coolant can fix the beam. Give what I said a try.

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Can’t now, but I replaced the tube and it was operational, same coolant.

I run OMTech coolant and it’s about $35 a gallon and I need 6.5l, so it adds to the cost.