Hello - I’ve run into a major problem in the middle of a very long project and I’m hoping to find some useful advice. I’m running LightBurn on a Mac and using hardware that is labelled as a PerGear Laserstorm S10 but appears to me to a rebranded Atomstack Laserstorm S10.
What I’m doing is burning a lengthy text string in a flowing font through a cedar fence board. The wood is 15mm thick, which is close to the upper limit of what the manufacturer claims the device can do. The board is 130mm wide and I’ve sized the font to take up most of that space. I’m new to this field and I had no idea that I needed a much more powerful laser to get this job done in any reasonable amount of time. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it after literally more than a week of run time. For those who would have known better than to task this hardware so much, I’m sure it’s easy to imagine that I’m setting up for literally hundreds of passes and the device has been running almost non-stop for more than a week.
That’s the background. The prob is that all of a sudden the laser stops both shining and moving a few minutes after I launch it. Lightburn thinks that it’s burning away but the device is just sitting there doing nothing after completing a few passes. When I restart the run, the same occurs again.
My best guess is that I have burned out the power supply. Can anyone with more experience shine a light on this, so to speak?
If I’m understanding you correctly I’m curious how you’ve got anything left but a charred mess. I really hope you’re not leaving the laser left running unattended overnight. There’s a real danger in a serious fire.
Having said that…
This is a possibility given what you’ve described. If you have a meter you can test voltage at the supply. Typically when you see situations like this it’s due to a communication issue between computer and laser. This is often due to a bad cable, static discharge, poor grounding, electrical interference, etc.
Strangely, I have got it working again and I didn’t do anything except turn it off for 8 hours. I have had probs with static buildup while I was learning but the unit is grounded to the computer frame now and yes I have seriously burned quite a few practice boards getting here. The good news cost-wise was that I had a bunch of old stuff lying around. The blower unit has no connection to software, just a manual switch. It’s also quite noisy so it only gets turned on when a run starts… unless someone forgets to turn it on.
No question - stressing out a small unit like this without a blower will light up your life so to speak (I have solid fire alarms & I’m very quick on my feet). Older lumber that has been in the sun for years is of course dryer than what one would prob’ly want to use for a final run.
The only change I have made to the run specs was to triple the run speed but I’m not convinced yet that that was a meaningful change. I think that letting the unit rest for a while is the reason.
For what it’s worth in terms of sharing experience
I believe that I have resolved this issue. I noticed that the power supply seemed extremely warm. The power supply that shipped with my unit is rated 12V 5.0A. I tested for voltage and that was up to spec. I replaced it with a 3rd party power supply rated at 12V 8.0A. This seems to have fully resolved the issue.
Some power supplies have a thermal cut out that is there to protect the unit from over heating. Some, and it would seem yours, have a reset which lets the power unit work after cooling down. I recently upgraded my Atomstack to a higher power laser head and the company advised using a higher output power supply. I think you have done the right thing changing your power unit. Good luck.