Hello Everyone!
My first post on this forum. I have been finishing up a home brew laser build project. 90W C02. I have had no issues with pulsing the laser and doing some small calibration cuts. The other day, I was cutting my first ‘real’ cutting program and had an issue with my HV power supply line splice arcing to the chassis. We shut down the machine. I re-did the HV splice and added extra insulation as well as an insulator between the machine frame and the route.
Today, trying to re-run that program, the laser would not fire. I could use some input on how to troubleshoot this issue.
I noticed that the light #14 on the ruida controller is flashing (Have not been able to find a clear answer on what this means) but have a friend that is building a sister machine to mine and his does it also, but the laser fires.
My question is this. Has anyone else experienced a laser no-fire after re-doing an HV line solder splice? Is there a best practice that I missed?
Is it possible I bricked my power supply with the arcing to the chassis due to a poor solder joint in the first place? Is there a way I can test this?
The laser will not pulse when prompted through the controller. Is there any setting that I may have inadvertently changed?
I’m learning a lesson here that I was hoping not to have to learn. I would appreciate any input or recommendations.
If the anode line was properly insulated, it would indicate a tube failure. If a tube doesn’t conduct the hv goes very high and will punch through most insulation and find a path to ground.
I don’t solder these as the voltage is so high a bit of resistance doesn’t do much of anything.
The laser power supply (lps) doesn’t usually fail from a quick instance of this but it’s sure possible.
If you unplug the control lines (green) to the lps and test (red) it from these, will it lase? This will run it at 100%, don’t lead finger it… it will work or it won’t.
@jkwilborn I was able to pulse the laser from the power supply. I used the ammeter that came with the LPS and pulsed it at ~ 20% power a couple of times. So, laser and power supply are functional.
The machine controller will run the axis motors no issue, but the laser will not fire through the controller/lightburn when the program is run, nor am I able to pulse it through the pulse button on the controller.
What’s confusing me is that nothing else changed from when I had my arcing event to trying to run the machine again.
To confirm, the current state is: the Ruida thinks it is turning on the laser, evidenced by the relevant red status LED turning on, but the laser is in fact not turning on?
One possible explanation might be a component level failure inside the Ruida controller. We can confirm or deny this hypothesis - are you comfortable with some basic wiring and using a multimeter?
It would also help to have some clear pics of the Ruida controller, Laser PSU, and the wiring between each.
Check the controller output of LPWM1 and the L-On1 signals. The pwm will run as long as it’s executing a layer and L-On1 will go low when the tube needs to lase.
You can test both of these without power to the lps with a voltmeter.
A 50% 5V pwm will read 2.5V – 20% is 1V, 80% – 4V… it’s the percent of 5V.
You’d have to do a line to check that L-On1 (L on the lps) goes low when it thinks it’s engraving/cutting a line.
@raykholo FYI, Hoping this is what you were looking for. But Yes. I am willing to check with a multimeter to diagnose, Would appreciate any tips you have
So this is my wiring config as well as my LPS.
I am lucky enough to have my best bud building a sister machine to mine. I took my 6445S motherboard and interface panel to his house and substituted mine for his. The UI touch screen when used with his main board allowed me to pulse his laser tube ( same laser tube that I have ) but when substituting my main board for his the pulse function failed to work. This is pushing me towards the fact that my machine main board was damaged during the arcing event…
We even tried it across the two laser outputs that the 6445s allows for… no dice.
So its looking like I damaged my machine controller, I’m am interested in how I can validate this with a multi meter.
@micrololin yes, I used the tape method when aligning my mirrors. Everything worked fine. I have run several calibration cuts since then. no change since the initial set up
@micrololin I did that Sir. I made sure that both laser tube options were turned on and had the same power settings. I tried pulsing between both laser inputs and still had no output
If I’m following you, it seems you’ve swapped out the Ruida – one works, one doesn’t… Seems to be pretty decisive as to the faulty component, the Ruida…
I’ve never seen one of these fail from this, but with the high voltages, you never know where they’ll end up… Much like lightening striking.
Here is a very short version in the interest of time:
You have a blue wire going to L and a red wire going to IN
When you command the Ruida to fire the laser, L gets pulled to ground, and IN puts out a PWM signal between 0 and 5v representing the % power to fire the laser at.
You will want to disconnect both of those wires and use a multimeter as follows:
When you command the laser to fire, you should see continuity between L-On1 and Gnd on the Ruida.
Separately, you should also see a voltage show up on the L-PWM1 (with reference to Gnd).
I think the simplest thing for you to do is to just pull out this green terminal block and carefully stick your meter probes into the Gnd and other pins there.
As far as commanding it, you’ll want to have these pins go active for long enough for your meter and you to perceive the changes. My suggestion is to set up a single line cut job with cut power attempts at 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%.
Since you have a known good Ruida, I suggest you perform these tests on it to confirm known good behaviour, and then try to replicate on the broken one. Let me know what your results, in particular “here is what I did/ here is what command I sent, here is what the good Ruida did, and here is what the damaged Ruida did.”
Yes, I don’t disagree with you. The test method I wrote up is to narrow down to exactly which component inside the Ruida may have failed and then the potential of replacing it. For example, if the PWM is working but L-On is not, that could be the buffer/ open drain inverter chip responsible for that signal, and perhaps that could be swapped out. It has been a few years since I have opened up the Ruida base so I am going off memory here.
All valid points, agreed. I was anticipating the possibility of hot glue preventing the wire from being removed easily, but yes, removing the wire from the LPSU and using it with the multimeter probe is a good move.
