Need Help-Laser not engraving properly

[RichardKl]

Hello！I have an 80w chinese laser machine，

I am trying to engrave a drawing but its not doing it properly, on vertical lines it goes deep but doing letters its very weak and letters turn out much lighter

I also tried to vector engrave a drawing in cutting mode with low power and it was going well until it had to draw a circle which it did but cut the wood through

I think it might be the laser going but it seems to be cutting more or less the same, both ply or acryllic, 3-4mm only when engraving is different and now I need much more power to engrave used to engrave at 600mmsec 14-15% and now I'm doing 38% as it can be seen on video

This happened between jobs I was engraving a small part 3 or 4 minutes work, and when I repeated the job it barely engraved, do laser tubes go out or start going out this way ?

Not really looking forward to buy another laser straight away which was the recommendation of gweike where I brought the machine

machine is year old and hasn't had much use its been used but not heavily, at all, temp has always been under 25º

Really appreciate some help.

[minervalo4]

A chinese laser tube can fail or work at reduced power before it reaches you already.
If you need higher power settings than before it is a good indication that your tube is going off.

[RichardKl]

Yes,I think so to, I only find it strange that for cutting power is still the same more or less and I don't cut with full power, I always try to use the least power and is it instant when it happens, I had the idea it would be gradual not ok one minute and the next is bad, I am thinking of buying the EFR zx1250 80w as I have been reading good reviews can someone that has it advise ?

[RichardKl]

does the laser behave erratically when its on the way out ?

I'd really appreciate some some expert opinion here as I'm just about to order a new tube and lens and would like to make sure if these are really necessary

What I find really strange is that it burns more powerfully when doing circles to the point that goes all the way through the 3mm ply but not when doing contours

[Wayne Rees]

hi

what are your min power settings on the laser, there are setting on the controller for max and min power, also in the software fior corner power ( or min power) this is the power it uses when doing curves, on engraving what is your step values for engraving..ie 0.05mm step

if its cutting but not engraving its usually a setting not the tube

[RichardKl]

hi

what are your min power settings on the laser, there are setting on the controller for max and min power, also in the software fior corner power ( or min power) this is the power it uses when doing curves, on engraving what is your step values for engraving..ie 0.05mm step

if its cutting but not engraving its usually a setting not the tube

Thank you very much

This got me thinking, I don't understand much about lasers, but I found very strange from start that machine one minute was engraving fine with 14% power and next minute it needs 40% I just thought something is not right here
.
And on top of it all cutting was normal

So I checked mirrors, they have a small misalignment now since last alignment 2 months ago, but not so much that justified this.

So next I went for the laser tube beam seemed perfect on tests mirror glass seemed ok (don't know the name of that glass in the tube end) but on intuition I sprayed some alcohol into it and cleaned it with compressed air.

And voila !! Machine is perfect again

and I am a very happy man !

In fact I don't recall it cutting such thin lines, its just amazing now

I include video of vector engraving with 14% power its better than it was before, in fact I think I'll have to lower the power even more.

So hopefully this will help someone save a lot of trouble and money.

Thank you all for the help.