First I move it to mirror 2 and pulse it. It marks the tape decently. I move it to the right position and pulse it 3 times before it even starts to mark the tape weakly. It is consistently showing this loss. This is an 80W Omtech and the power is set to 11%. I noticed originally when trying to cut a large footprint file and it was cut fine on the left but as the head went right on the bed (away from mirror 2) the cuts failed to be made.
I saw another user had this issue but it didn’t appear to be resolved. A few people have recommended it was an alignment issue so I’ve been trying to dial in the alignment for the past week. Here is where it hits on the first mirror:
I am aware that it is off center on the second mirror but that’s just where the two dots are on top of each other and everything I’ve read/seen suggests that its ok here (correct me if I’ve come to an incorrect conclusion).
Another person suggested that there may be smoke or something in the beam path but from the video I think its pretty clear that is not the case.
Another suggested that it was my tube dying, so I asked if this is how dying tubes behave in which another person stated no. Neither providing elaboration. I’ve tried to search for behaviors of dying tubes and only have come across weak performance across the entire bed.
Needless to say I’m pretty lost on this and would like to get my machine working again. Let me know if I need to provide any additional details. Any help would be appreciated.
The problem is either the led/combiner (doubt it) or your tube is going south or has already gone…
The image on the target of the tubes mode doesn’t appear to be TEM00, without that you will never be able to get a useful alignment…
This is my m2 with 2 strikes, near and far. On the right is the machine a few days later… you can see it’s drifting from TEM00 state… It was also dead center of the target…
Can you elaborate on how the beam combiner can be the problem?
I may be misunderstanding your TEM00 reference. Is this diffraction of the beam in the tube making mine appear more like TEM01? Since I received my machine a year ago when running at low power I have always gotten this kind of pattern but when power is increased it becomes more normal. Should it be consistent even at its lowest (turn on) power?
If I get my machine fully online I should probably make some of those too lol.
The purpose of the test it to see what the beam looks like coming out of the tube without any other optics. Your test is clearly after the combiner optics… probably doesn’t matter, but it’s not procedure. If your combiner has a problem, how would we know?
No, but some of it depends on the tube and size… Large tubes seem to lase at a higher minimum than smaller tube… Some 60W tubes from good vendors claim they can run from 12W to 60W… indicating they don’t expect proper operation at less than 20% power…
The tube needs power to properly lase… if you run it so it cannot lase properly, you can damage the gases. You should run it where it’s in TEM00 mode.
This is one of the problems when trying to do delicate work with a large machine. Compare 20% of 80W (16W) to 20% of 40W (8W)… I can do engraving at half the power you can manage and mine will lase well at 10% power, so I could be doing it with power as low as 4W…
Can you test it at 20% power?
Set the pulse duration to some very small value… don’t want any part of it burnt through…
I understand. It is after the combiner. Fair point.
This makes sense to me. I was under the assumption that when you do the alignment you want to run the machine as low as it can go so that you can mark the tape instead of blow right through it.
I’ll have to see if I can get into the settings and figure out where to change that. I’ve just been using the default values. It will probably be tomorrow though as it has started storming and my machine is near my garage door. I dont want to get even more issues lol. Thanks for the information.
Yes, where it’s properly operating… if it isn’t lasing, you will have a tough time getting it aligned… This will be exacerbated when the tube is lasing properly.
Using the Ruida console…
Power is set with the Max-Power* button.
Z/U → Manual Set to set the pulse time/continuous mode.
Good luck
* You can change min/max power while a job is running from the console…
so I was messing around with the machine today and started off making sure to recreate the problem. but there was no problem. even got through a couple jobs and its behaving normally. Which im sure is not a good sign as I didnt change anything. But I’ll consider it resolved for now.
