I’ve been struggling to find an issue that has developed on my 50w Chinese co2 laser. It has a Ruida controller and we’re fully up to date with lightburn. The laser now seems to fire when I frame any artwork and now burns in the traversal lines on all engraving / fill layers.
I’ve dug around with mentions of potential power supply issues, but want to confirm before I spend any money on the machine. The machine itself has about 180 hours on it with a tube replacement around 40 hours ago. While checking for issues I did notice the earth wire had detached from the housing. This is now fixed but I’m worried it could have caused a problem somewhere else.
The symptoms exactly match a failed HV power supply that no longer pays attention to the L-ON signal from the controller. Compare your picture with one from my similar machine:
Whether the input has failed or the current control circuitry can no longer reduce the current to zero remains unknown.
In any event, a new power supply is the fix.
That seems unusually early for a tube replacement, suggesting the power supply had other issues. Perhaps it was not regulating the current correctly, thus overstressing the tube, and has now failed completely.
If the machine is still within warranty, get that conversation started right away …
