I was running a job like I always do and then laser stopped halfway through. I have my water chiller running and air assist on. I tried to pulse the laser through the controller HMI and it wouldn’t fire. So I pulled the side panel and tried to pulse the laser with the test button and that wouldn’t fire either. The power supply makes a sporadic electrical arcing type noise although it is faint.
This is a 50w chinese ebay machine. Blue and white. It has 364 hours of job operating time and 150 hours of ‘laser on’ time. Tube is old as it sat in an air conditioned house for a few years before I started using it.
Should I replace the tube and the power supply? Or is there another avenue I should be looking for an error. No connection problems with the computer and the HMI seems to be behaving normally.
How do you know it’s not the controller? Your probably right about the two you suspect. Do you have a ma meter? Does it show any movement? If so there is current running through the tube, supply probably OK.
Good question on what do you need to determine the issue. A high voltage meter?
I have an analog ammeter in place and it isn’t moving at all! It was cutting at 70% power at the time that it quit and that is around 16ma on the meter. I need to pull out the meter and see if that failed and is interrupting the current.
I wouldn’t waste your time checking the meter, probably the last thing. It shows there is no current flow so we’re back to chicken or the egg. I haven’t had enough time with these machines to give you much help here. Hoping someone will chime in with some great news
Which one is cheaper to replace? Probably the lps.
So I think that I’m going to buy these parts and hope for the best!
Tube:
Power Supply:
Chiller:
I currently don’t have a chiller and I use a bucket and rotating frozen water bottles. The temperature stays in a good spot and I can maintain nicely. That being said I wonder if that variation is partially what caused the failure. So I figure I should buy a proper chiller. Does lightobject sell quality stuff? They are only one state away from me and should have the parts faster and lower shipping cost than cloudray without an ocean to cover. Seems like a better chance at getting the parts unbroken.
