Problem 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER


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    Exclamation 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Hello all and thank you for the time you spend to read my thread.
    I am Alex from Romania.
    I am watching this forum for a long time and read a lot, from this forum i got ideas and bulit a cnc router 2 years ago, it's a beast 2x1.5 meters nema 34 stepper motors 2.2 kw spindle, it works nice and had no issues with it also built a lot of cool stuf with this thing.
    Regarding the router i wanted a co2 laser, because i had no spare time any more with my job and small bussines in woodworking and props, all beacause of you guys.
    So i had bought on ebay a co2 laser 130w 1390 from Vevor .

    I worked the hell out of it for the last 7-8 months. until hell broke lose and came to my laser. So here are my problems.

    From the begining the lower right side of the table it wouldn't pass through the material all the way evrey time, or it had small points were it would't pass al the way through, it didn't botther me as i had the rest of the table to work with.

    Now the only place that it passes all the way through is the left upper size of the table.

    I did the following steps to figure out this problem.

    Aligned the body of the machine so that is leveled as much as i could because the chasis was not welded right it will never be leveld perfectly, it has a warp from bottom left to upper right.

    Aligned the tube, mirrors, so on my 4 corners of the table the dot is spot on the center of the third mirror
    Aligned the lens so that the beam is perfectly perpendicular with the last mirror
    I did these steps probably 4 or 5 times now maybe more
    The honey comb is perfectly leveled and paralel with the head precision is about -0.2/+0.3

    To me it seems that the laser still punches power but if i test a piece of acrylic on the left part of table and right part of table, same material same power no lens on. I press the pulse button and keep it presed. in the left part of table it passes throuhg it in 5 sec while in the right it passes it in 10 sec.

    Oh and also changed mirrors and lens, same results.

    If anyone somehow may help me with any info any ideeas i'll apreciate that.

    I don't know what else to try or due. I'm out of ideas and i need this laser to work.
    Also if anyone in Europe from who i can buy spare parts for the laser hope for god no tube or power supply )

    Thank you all

    Let's crack the problem.

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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Does the problem get worse with humidity? CO2 wavelengths are absorbed by moisture in the air. As well as being absorbed by dust/smoke. You should normally expect to see a small drop in power the further away from the resonator but maybe you are seeing the end of your tube's useful life? Do you have a mA meter on your tube or power supply so you can see how much current is being supplied?



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    Quote Originally Posted by Blackened View Post
    Does the problem get worse with humidity? CO2 wavelengths are absorbed by moisture in the air. As well as being absorbed by dust/smoke. You should normally expect to see a small drop in power the further away from the resonator but maybe you are seeing the end of your tube's useful life? Do you have a mA meter on your tube or power supply so you can see how much current is being supplied?
    There is no humidity in the shop, if there is smoke or not in the air it does the same thing i will get a mA meter and install it to see the current suplied. Most of the time i did worked the tube at 75/80% . But then why is it cuting in one part of the table and not in the other? If there was a power loss the position of the head on table would not matter.



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    i keep pressed the pulse button here is a video of how the tube is acting.
    In program the color stays the same.




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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    It's highly unlikely that the tube is faulty - and there is no way whatsoever that the distance from the tube to the lens can make even the slightest difference if everything is aligned. You seem to have covered everything that could possibly affect it, and if the alignment is actually correct, it is more likely the gantry and the bed (table) are not correct. Check your focus distance at each corner - and in the centre.

    One other thing to check - is the lens properly seated in the lens holder - and is it the correct way up? (Convex side up)



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    Quote Originally Posted by TheREV View Post
    It's highly unlikely that the tube is faulty - and there is no way whatsoever that the distance from the tube to the lens can make even the slightest difference if everything is aligned. You seem to have covered everything that could possibly affect it, and if the alignment is actually correct, it is more likely the gantry and the bed (table) are not correct. Check your focus distance at each corner - and in the centre.

    One other thing to check - is the lens properly seated in the lens holder - and is it the correct way up? (Convex side up)
    Thank you for the reply , the lens is fitted with convex side up. Today i will check the head alignmemt to table also i will check if it is perpendicular to table and parallel to gantry. I don't think that the tube or power supply are damaged. The problem has to be the head last mirror and lens, something there is not right just have to figure out what.



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    By just looking at your video, sad to say man, your tube is acting up, in the shop we used up 50-60 tubes already in a span of 8 years, that`s why it`s better or wise to install a milli amp meter on the power supply to quickly determine how much amperage it consumes, the more amp. the full power it got, by and by it will go down in time, you can quickly determine also if the HV wires got toasted, or the HV connector to the tube getting corroded, with HV present by and by it will eat up the connectors accelerating corrosion, when the tube gets weaker various problems arises, things like double laser cut, laser getting thicker while cutting, sometimes getting offset beam even if the mirrors are perfectly aligned, the purple glow in your video is pulsating and weak. on my opinion just use it until it`s completely depleted, that`s the time you replace it with another tube.



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Air is not transparent to Infrared wavelengths of 10.6nm. Nor is water vapour in the air, or particulate matter. There is *some* loss of power to the air the beam travels through. If the power is dropping and is already only barely enough to cut through, then the further away the head is, the more air is in the beam's path and there may be a noticeable effect. I'm not saying this is definitely the cause of the OPs issues though. I doubt it myself actually, but the OP did say that all the optics were aligned and all else was good.

    Just had a re-read. If the test at opposite corners with lens removed resulted in double the time before the material is pierced that would be a lot more dramatic than any piddly little amount of power the air might absorb lol. Seems likely the beam is diverging but that should also result in a larger diameter spot size? Was this evident during the test?



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Hey guys,

    Thank you for the responds first of all, and here is what i found out and what i did.

    Brought the hole laser body back on it-s wheels an leveled it again with the screw legs that it has. Now ass i said in my first post one corner of the body is not as the same as the others(it is about 4 to 5mm upeer than the other 3) Bad welding of the frame not beeing aligned well maybe. So i have 3 corners laser hits spot on and the lower right corner the dot is lower and a bit to the right by 4/5mm. the place where it didn,t cut so well from the begining.
    Aligned the beam on mirrors and lens. still no cut.

    And as i sat down on my chair and think what the hell do i do next lit a cigarret and i was loking through the right visit door of the laser i saw that my head was not parallel to the gantry.
    So with lens on the beam hit middle and with lens of the beem was actualy going to the front of the machine, so my beam hit the lens at an angle and come out at an angle.
    I set the head parallel checked it with and without lens, both times in the middle.
    Took the honey comb out cleaned it and leveled it again .

    The laser cuts much better except the lower corner were the body is up and the laser beam moves and it does come out at an angle.

    In conclusion the head was the fault and bent body.

    But still had to lower the speed of the cut after i did all this, the cut is good and clean.
    So i measured the wall plug from where i power the laser , and the damn thing has 190v not 220v. Infact my hole workshop has 190v now and the reason is that here is winter time and it seems like a lot of my neighbours use electric heaters and are actually overloading the grid.
    So the power loss is there but i think it is from the power grid. I am aware that also the tube lost some power after all the work it did but man it-s to soon for it to shut down.

    I will try one day to straighten the body hope i won,t ruin it more than it is.
    Overall yesterday was a good day. to bad my wall plugs have 190v



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Does anyone that has a 130 w laser i am curios what is your speed and power for 4mm plywood?



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    14-16 mm per second


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



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    Quote Originally Posted by engraving_hub View Post
    14-16 mm per second


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    I cut with 20/24 mm/sec and 70/75% power
    Also out of nowhere the laser cuts like it never did before even in the corner that is warped. I have no frikin clue why it started cutting again.



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    PROBLEM FIXED

    Hello all, so as weeks past by and i had to reduce power and speed gradualy, it became clear to me that i have to get a new tube. A small part of the power loss still has to do with the warped body of the machine. It degraded prety fast in the last 2 weeks.
    But as i was at work today and i was looking for suppliers near me and exchanging some emails, and it is not cheap 150w tube here is about 1400 euros.
    The laser operator guy comes in and says one simple thing to me and it goes lke this: "CHILLER UNIT KEEPS GIVING ME ERRORS , WANNA COME LOOK AT IT? " , went to the unit and checked the water conductivity it was off the charts. AND it HIT ME like a train.

    In the middle of October last year i changed the water in my CW-5200 chiller and i added CAR ANTIFREEZE (It's winter here this time of the year).

    So i left work bought 15 litters of DEMINERALIZED WATER and flush all the WATER WITH ANTIFREEZE in it from the chiller and the tube.
    Cleaned it 2 times with 2.5 liters of DEMINERALIZED WATER each time.
    Filled it up with 7 liters of ONLY AND ONLY DEMINERALIZED WATER, and the power is BACK ON.

    So as i was about to give up it had not came to my mind that the ANTIFREEZE is doing all the power loss that i had.

    Thank you all for all the messages.
    .
    Here is my MISTAKE, don't give up always check every little thing there is to check, i almost spent 1500 euros for a tube.
    And mine is fine just my dumb idea with the antifreeze.



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Glad you sorted out the problem! There are additives that are safe to use for laser coolant but I don't know off the top of my head any brand names.



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    Quote Originally Posted by Blackened View Post
    Glad you sorted out the problem! There are additives that are safe to use for laser coolant but I don't know off the top of my head any brand names.
    I don,t know any aditives that will prevent the water from frezzing either. Those would help to pass trhrough the winter



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    I have been using the pink RV antifreeze in mine for the last 4 years no freezing and it gets down to 10 below F



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    Quote Originally Posted by fixtureman1 View Post
    I have been using the pink RV antifreeze in mine for the last 4 years no freezing and it gets down to 10 below F
    Can you put a picture of the antifreeze i had pink in it too



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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    Here is what I use

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER-antifreeze-png  


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    Default Re: 130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

    hope you got it all worked out. I have a 150 watt laser and currently running a 130 watt tube in it. I have always used propelyne glycol in my chiller. Never any issues, never. If you are in need of a new tube I just purchased 3 from my supplier and sold one, using one and have another for sale at cost with free shipping. let me know if I can be of assistance. and yes these are 10K hr tubes.



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    Quote Originally Posted by cya_alex View Post
    Hello all and thank you for the time you spend to read my thread.
    I am Alex from Romania.
    I am watching this forum for a long time and read a lot, from this forum i got ideas and bulit a cnc router 2 years ago, it's a beast 2x1.5 meters nema 34 stepper motors 2.2 kw spindle, it works nice and had no issues with it also built a lot of cool stuf with this thing.
    Regarding the router i wanted a co2 laser, because i had no spare time any more with my job and small bussines in woodworking and props, all beacause of you guys.
    So i had bought on ebay a co2 laser 130w 1390 from Vevor .

    I worked the hell out of it for the last 7-8 months. until hell broke lose and came to my laser. So here are my problems.

    From the begining the lower right side of the table it wouldn't pass through the material all the way evrey time, or it had small points were it would't pass al the way through, it didn't botther me as i had the rest of the table to work with.

    Now the only place that it passes all the way through is the left upper size of the table.

    I did the following steps to figure out this problem.

    Aligned the body of the machine so that is leveled as much as i could because the chasis was not welded right it will never be leveld perfectly, it has a warp from bottom left to upper right.

    Aligned the tube, mirrors, so on my 4 corners of the table the dot is spot on the center of the third mirror
    Aligned the lens so that the beam is perfectly perpendicular with the last mirror
    I did these steps probably 4 or 5 times now maybe more
    The honey comb is perfectly leveled and paralel with the head precision is about -0.2/+0.3

    To me it seems that the laser still punches power but if i test a piece of acrylic on the left part of table and right part of table, same material same power no lens on. I press the pulse button and keep it presed. in the left part of table it passes throuhg it in 5 sec while in the right it passes it in 10 sec.

    Oh and also changed mirrors and lens, same results.

    If anyone somehow may help me with any info any ideeas i'll apreciate that.

    I don't know what else to try or due. I'm out of ideas and i need this laser to work.
    Also if anyone in Europe from who i can buy spare parts for the laser hope for god no tube or power supply )

    Thank you all

    Let's crack the problem.
    My friend, just buy a new laser Seriously ... there's no point in repairing them if they already fail. Okay, you could have changed the details, but you probably had the whole system broken...



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130w co2 laser LOSS OF POWER

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