Since christmas is always the most busy time for our 50W CO2 Laser it was quite as busy for us with Lightburn. After 10 projects within the last week my Laser stoped working because of a sensor issue. It’s seems to be known as “cooler error 1”. T water is flowing quite fine and the pump is working well to I think it’s a sensor error I cant solve that soon anyhow. So I would like to replace the sensor:
Test the sensor to make sure it’s actually broken.
Remove the leads and test continuity with the water pump on and off. When flowing you should have a closed circuit.
I haven’t seen a flow sensor that looks like that. Am I right in assuming that there’s a 90 degree bend that redirects water into the machine behind the mounting plate? If so, that seems a good way to restrict flow.
In any case, these are fairly simple electric devices. As long as you can sort out the mounting you could get other sensors to work without too much fuss.
What you have is a pressure sensor… newer lasers now use actual flow sensors. Upstream from that sensor you will find a “Y” in the tubing. You can remove that Y piece and install an actual ‘flow’ sensor in its place. Many people use this one:
The wiring will make no difference, is it is only a two wire connection (Normally Open circuit, I believe), but the flow direction of your coolant will matter. Just make sure to get that part right during installation.
There is only one incoming tube… hence the ‘pressure’ sensor and not ‘flow’.
They are a pretty old style design and nobody uses them anymore… which is why the OP can’t locate a replacement easily.
This seems like a bad idea. Pressure could be present in the line without flow…
I would expect this to be Normally Open given that water protection at the LPS can be bypassed by bridging the WP to Ground. But I haven’t reviewed this in some time so may be misremembering.
Probably one of the reasons nobody uses them anymore… that, and the fact that the goofy clips or zip ties that the manufacturers used to attach the hose are always failing. I’ve assisted many people on the Facebook Groups to whom this has happened and left puddles inside and outside the laser cabinet.
You may be right on this… thinking back to my little K40, I could put a jumper on the motherboard pins and bypass the lid and water sensor with one jumper… so yeah, probably an Open Circuit error unless the flow or pressure Closes it. I’ll edit my previous text above. It really shouldn’t matter to the OP however, if he’s just swapping one device for the other.
Wouldn’t it be sufficient to just have more water in the reservoir than in the lines? Or a kinked line that occurred while pressurized.
Which may be okay since this will tend to fail safe. If you have bubbles in the line you’d want to know that anyway. False positive is preferable to a false negative in this case I would think.
You ever try to kink a garden hose while pressurized? Not very easy. I don’t remember any fluid lines self-kinking, so it has to be somebody messing with it.
True, bubbles are the first sign the pump is sucking air instead of water. The sensing system should be a manual reset type too. First notice, shut it down, now.
I wired mine to 5200 series chiller, it handles not only flow but over and under temperature.
Much better idea, then run it to the Ruida to handle the error, that will let you fix it then continue.
I have this one in line to monitor flow, but it generates pulses, not an output that can directly drive the Ruida WP input. It’s a hall effect sensor, gives you pulses related to l/m… I have an Arduino that handles it’s output.
I haven’t seen one of these for sale, ever, even from all the laser vendors… I think I still have mine in the large box of replaced parts… need me to ship it to you?
In a pinch, you can short out the two wires and run, but if the flow fails nobody will know
