Hello everyone, I posted a couple of months ago asking for advice about which co2 laser machine to buy for a new bussiness of architectural material cuts, the chinese machine I bought came 2 weeks ago, worked on the installation and opened the shop. I've been working a lot the past 10 days but I noticed that the last 2-3 days I had to increase the power and/or decrease the speed to perform the same cuts I would do with less power on the first week of operations. Yesterday it got worst and the machine wont even cut 2mm rugged cardboards (Its a 100W machine) at 100% power.
I opened the back to clean the lenses and see what was going on, and found out that there is black dust all over the tube (You can see it in the pictures), we closed the shop today and contacted the supplier in China but due to the time difference they have not replied yet. Im worried as I still have to pay the shop's rent and worker and have customers waiting for their work.
Does anyone have any idea what could have happened with the machine? I would appareciate any advice or comments.
Thank you in advance.
attach images:
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there is a chance that your tube is arcing to the metal housing due to damaged insulation of one of the tube terminals or wires.
To test this, you could operate the machine carefully with the back cover open and listen for the characteristic noise of arcing of your may even watch it..
Be very careful and stay away from the machine when doing this, not touching the housing or the tube and its wiring by any means!
Wearing some kind of laser safety goggles is advisable.
Anyway,before doing this, check the wiring and insulation of the terminals carefully (with the machine completely shut down an unplugged) and look for dark/dusty spots on the housing near the terminals. These spots could indicate where an arcing occurs.
Thank you for the reply Stephan, I will do a inspection of the points you mentioned in a couple of hours, if its the case, the solution would be to just replace the insulation of those terminals? You mean on the high voltage side of the tube right? where the red wire is on the images?
Hi,
yes of course most likely at the red wire/anode side of the tube.
The wires may be soldered or clipped to the terminals. In either case, terminals/joints should be wrapped w high voltage insulation tape carefully.
Hello, I did the inspection you recommended and I found out there are marks like gunpowder on the casing, where the red wire connects to the tube wire, and on top of the casing. Also all the black dust was on the surface of the tube so I managed to clean it, so indeed theres been arcing.
What kind of soldering do I need for this connectors, and which tape should I cover it with?
Also I beleive there is something wrong with the mirrors or alignment of the laser light, as you can see on the video on the attachment, there is smoke and light coming out of the header´s top mirror which Is holding some of the beam power in my opinion, does anyone have any advice on how to align this?
Thank you for your help, any advice is highly appreciated.
Hi Christian,
our machine (GWeike) was equipped with crocodile crimps to connect to the tube. We had the arcing all the time and it was difficult to wrap the crimps with insulation tape.
I discarded the crimps and soldered the wires with normal electronic solder. Theres a chance to damage the tube when doing this although it´s the common way for some manufacturers.
Do this at your own risk. Proper insulation is crucial, look for High Voltage Rubber Splicing Tape.
Funny video BTW. For sure you need to align the beam path, follow the instructions in your machine´s manual.
So yesterday I fixed the connections using high voltage tape, aligned the light path which took me about 3 and a half hours but it was fun using video tutorials, I cleaned all the mirrors and when I thought It was finally over, I found that the focus lens was broken (See attachment) I believe this was one of the main reason the laser was losing power.
I did not clean this lens at all for the 10 days of operation my machine had, do you think this was caused by the lack of cleaning or I got a faulted lens? I would like to know this so I ask the supplier to cover it using the warranty or just order one from him if it was my fault.
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Its always important to keep lens and mirrors clean at all times. make sure your air assist is on when cutting this will help keep lens clean. Make sure your exhaust sucks all the smoke out of cabinet this will help keep mirrors clean.mdf, wood, leather are very dirty stuff to cut so keep an extra eye on your mirrors and lens.
see attached PDF to aline mirrors
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