A momentary Panic Attack

Community Laser Talk
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Please bear with me. I’m running LB on my old PC. Has to be at least 20 years old. It’s in my shop. I’m finishing an order of 50, and just started on the last 25. In the background I’m streaming Youtube Video, and Think Or Swim from Schwab so I can keep an eye on the market.

I’ve done this before. No issues.

Today, I’m cleaning up a tumbler that just finished, and I hear the fiber laser kind of studder. It actually stopped for a milisecond or so, and resumed. It did it maybe 3 more times.

When that one was done, I turned off the laser, and closed all the applications on my PC. It never did it again on the balance of the order.

When you press start in LB the laser automatically starts. If the PC was being pressed for Compute power, would that studder be a symptom of that, or do I have possibly something glitchy on the fiber.

The fiber is a 50watt JPT from BWM. It may have 300 hours run time on it. I don’t use it a lot.
Thoughts on what might have been the issue? Shop was around 70 degrees F. I’m paranoid now, and have a large order coming up in around 4 weeks when it gets here. Around 300 Tumblers.

I do have CO2 that I did use at one time for tumblers before I got my Fiber. Last time I tried to run the CO2 with a tumbler, I could not get it to burn a 5mm x 5mm square. You can find that thread here where some folks tried to help.

One more thing. I unplug everything in my shop if it’s going to storm. Networking gear, cameras, PC’s Lasers, etc. Just saying. Personally I want to believe it was waiting on the PC for data.

Anyway, thoughts on what I saw today?

TIA

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You shouldn’t multitask with the same PC that’s controlling your hardware. It’s rare but doing so on low-power PCs/usb bus competition during operation can cause issues.

Galvo devices produce a LOT of data. Best not to interrupt the stream with other workloads, if you can.

1 Like
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Thanks Colin. Up till yesterday there wasn’t a problem. I understand what your talking about. I didn’t know if all the data was sent to the Fiber in one shot, and then processed via the fiber itself, or if it was a continuous data stream.

I appreciate the info though. From now on. That PC belongs to the Fiber or the CO2 Only.

I don’t do enough laser work to warrant a 2nd Fiber machine. It’s just a side hustle.

Thanks !