My laser is not cutting through anymore

LightBurn Hardware Compatibility Ruida controllers
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1

I’ve recently started having an issue with my laser. To start, I have the Gweike Cloud Pro II 50w Co2 laser, ruida controller.

The issue I am having is my machine recently doesn’t cut through wood that I have been cutting for the longest time. The only way I was able to get it to cut through was to change the material setting to the inverse of what it should be. For example, I normally have settings for a 3mm thick acrylic piece at a speed of 8 and power of 80 with the material set to 14mm. However, as of late, the only way my laser is cutting through is if I revise the settings for the same 3mm piece of acrylic to be speed of 7, power of 85 and material set to 3mm which is way off from what it should be.

I have removed and re-added my device multiple times, made sure that the Z-axis is working and that the right settings were checked for z-axis (enable z-axis, optimize z-axis moves both turned on and relative Z moves only turned off). I have no idea what changed. I have tried cleaning everything multiple times but still not getting the results I once had.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

I assume 8mm/s? You need to start with metrics when you use numbers, so we know what you’re saying.

As co2 tubes age, they can and many times do, loose power over time… so a change from 8mm/s@80% to 7mm/s@85% power would not surprise me.

What is long? This might add up to the tube aging and is normal. Most of these tubes last around 2 - 4k hours, or a year or two with 8 hour a day use. I don’t see many that do better, but one of the k40 people has been running his for 7 years… My tube went out of TEM00 mode over a 3 day weekend…

When you get up into the 90W and higher range the tubes, a good tube will last 10K hours…

Unless you have some way to measure the output, I don’t think there is enough change to worry about…

Good luck

:smile_cat:

3

You stated you cleaned everything…Did you clean the mirrors and check if your beam is centered? Lens may be dirty.
Just trying to think for you. lol