UPDATE - 4 years with my WKLaser LC6090

[FlyGuy007]

I have had my WK Laser now for about 4 years and I thought I'd give a quick update on how's it's been holding up.

The laser was very well priced, in fact it was hundreds less than any one else at the time. Shipping and production was fast but it arrived in a different port than promised and it cost me about $400 to have it moved to a local port so I could clear customs here and save a bundle. Still though the shipping of the machine to my door was unrealistically cheap anyway. China to Canada... $200!!

Setup was a pain but it's mostly the quality manuals or lack thereof. All words are English but very often they just made no sense. However once up and running it has been a real workhorse. I suspect that after all this time they have drastically improved.

After 4 years I am finally ready to replace some of the drive belts, the two that really need it are $11 for the pair. The rest are probably OK. After about 2000hrs of use I replaced the air assist struts on the door. Still on the original evacuation pump..... bet there's 3000hrs on that.

I go through a tube and a power supply about every 7 months. I think I am on my 7th tube and 5th power supply. WK has the best price on tubes that I have found but the Power supplies can be had little cheaper but since they are often bought in pairs it's cheaper to get them at WK as a pair. Most of my tubes failures have been due to failure of coolant, either forgetting to turn it on or having it fail. Be warned, a tube that self destructs will often take the power supply with it. I am now installing a flow sensor to help extend the life of the tubes. running it even for a few minutes overheats it and drastically reduces the tube life. Running it for more than a few minutes often leads to the tube exploding!! Done it twice. Power supplies can often be repaired as usually you can see the damaged component and since I have old power supplies I have been able to rob parts successfully a few times.

The tubes are rated at 2500hrs but I have never gotten more than about 800 out of one of mine. Still at the replacement price I just consider them consumables. I hope adding the flow sensor will allow more of my tubes to live longer.

I'm very happy with the machine other than having to cut using an old version of Corel, it works great. It's fast efficient and built like a tank. Parts are very reasonable and the support form WK has been super, as good or superior to anything domestic for sure.

Thanks
Mike Purcell

[FlyGuy007]

1. Run the power at 88% maximum. In my configuration 100% is about 10% above the max rated amperage of the tube. It will cut fast but won't last long. I have the upgraded 80w tube but I suspect the numbers are close on the 60w setups as well.
2. If cutting plastics of any kind get the evac pump outside so the evac hoses are always under negative pressure. My house always stunk of burnt plastic because you could never 100% seal those hoses, moving the pump outside meant even if the tube had holes it didn't matter!! Great mod.
3. Wire a flow sensor in line with the door safety switch to prevent the tube lasing with proper cooling.
4. Keep an extra lens on hand, on my third now after 4000+ hrs.
5. Use auto antifreeze made for aluminum in your coolant system. Just do it, it saves a bunch of work and does not affect anything as far as I cam tell. I run mine hard and it stands up well. DO NOT USE bleach, it corrodes the aluminum passages in the tube and will destroy it with a few weeks. Lost one tube that way.
6. I cut acrylic and PETG often. Whenever slowing the cutting speed down to cut thick material, I have cut up to 1/2" acrylic at about 3% max speed you must have clean honeycomb below. Do not use dirty honeycomb, especially if you have cut PETG with it as it WILL catch on fire as the beam heats the top edge of the aluminum. It will so don't do it.

Thanks
Mike

[lrob]

Mike,

Thanks for the update. I also have a WK Laser LC6090 80W. I have had it about 8 months. Nice to see that you are still getting good service from them.

I agree that the unit is well built. I do however have the automatic chiller. Hope this gives me longer tube life than you are experiencing.

Your comment about using the 88% power did catch my attention though. How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Larry

[FlyGuy007]

Larry;

I also have the automatic chiller and used it initially but the CW-3000 that I have just won't keep up with the heat generated by the 80w tube. I switched to the pond pump and that worked fine for a while but eventually switched back to the chiller after I placed an extra oil cooler and started using antifreeze.

The 88% was just a trial and error. 100% destroyed tubes and power supplies within 30-40 hrs, same with 95% although they lasted longer, at 90% everything seemed fine until I invariably forgot one day to turn on the coolant. 88% is just a hair lower for some extra tolerance. In my case the 80w tubes are rated for 25mA and the power supplies I use will output 28mA. Running at 88% gives me about 22-23mA at the tube which means the tube is running safely below it's maximum as is the power supply.

Mike

[lrob]

Mike,

I have the CW-5000 chiller, maybe the larger size will be better. Only time will tell.

Larry

[SkipW]

Yes, the CW 5000 is an actual refrigerated unit, right Larry? The 3000 series that Mike and I got with our 80w machines just uses a radiator and fan for cooling. It can't keep up. I don't think they should be used on anything over a 60w, if that. Live and learn I guess.

[lauclick]

Mike thank you for your advices and posts.

We are also having a WKlaser LC9060 since two years by now.

I have to say that until now we are really satisfied with our machine. At starting we had some alignment and commune problems like power settings or software etc., but since we learned how to deal with them the machine worked perfectly.

I am writing to you hoping for some advice in a problem that we are facing with the machine. I might now the solution but before trying it I would like some more expertized help from guys with more experience here. I will contact also the chinese provider but first I try it here.

We are drawing a rectangle and the machine cuts or engrave a soft parallelogram. At first you don`t noticed but if you measure it is not a perfect rectangle. That means the angles are not square. The x axis seams to be horizontal but the y axis seams not to be perfect vertical.
I am not shure how can I start to make a x, y axis alignment. Which is the correct way? Have you done it previously?
Any advice is really helpful and grateful!

Thank you very much
Laur

[FlyGuy007]

If the laser is starting and stopping at the right spot then the only thing is that one of your rails has loosened enough that it's moved a bit. Check the tension on the belt. they should be the same all around. I replaced my drive belts recently as the smaller rear ones had come apart with use. Mine has many thousands of hours on it now and other than operator error with not turning on the coolant and ruining a tube and sometimes shorting the power supply. I haven't had a single part failure. I've worn out a set of door lifts but they are cheap.

Thanks
Mike

[smoe]

Hello Laur

We had this problem on our LC1280 recently- after it had been working for about 4 years without a problem . Well ,almost ;-)

What happened was that one of the belts had slipped (or better say jumped?) on the pulley. I loosened the belt tensioner, set the belt 2 teeth back and voilá -perfectly square again.
Of course you´d have to figure out whether the "unsquareness" is about one, two, or more teeth on your machine. And don´t forget to tension the belt properly afterwards.

It happened a few times to us that the gantry of the machine ran over limit and crashed into the back of the machine. This happens with bad data sometimes. I´m sure the slipped belt thing came from such an accident.

I also like to mention that we´re generally very happy with our machine. Still working with the original 80W tube, still delivers 72 Watt on 95 percent which is the setting we use most of the time. We use distilled water without adding anything else for cooling. Water was changed only one single time when we changed the CW3000 cooler for a newer, better one :-)

Greetings,

Stephan

[lauclick]

Hey thank you guys for your really fast answers.
I really appreciate this

Mike
Yes the laser is starting and stopping at the right spot. You might have right because I have tightened one of the belts few weeks ago.
The concern appeared how can I control this if by tightening the belts I might lose the square angles?
First - how can you appreciate when two belts are having the same tension?
Is there any way to measure this or to set this other than just by feeling or guessing?
Second - how can I control an angle by tensioning a belt?

Smoe
I think we are having a very similar problem as you had.
We had completely the same accident as you. Our gantry of the machine ran as yours over limit and also crashed into the back of the machine. This seems to be a common problem in our machines. I didn`t know that this might lead to a misalignment to x & y axis. If so I have to admit is hard to approximate which one of teeth will solve the problem and in which direction?

If my Y axis is not square but parallel (creating in this way a parallelogram) I thought maybe is better to dismantle the Y axis and to start a completely new alignment to the axis.
I have to say I am afraid in a failure alignment without having a proper way to do it, worsening the things. I am also concerned not to involve any extra forces into the ball bearing by setting the Y axis not perfectly parallel.

Again thanks
Laur

Ps: I excuse for my bad English.

[smoe]

Hi Laur

You could use a large try square to control and adjust the angle of the gantry.
Attach the try square to the left or right rail and use a smaller try square or any piece of straight material on the gantry to take bearings.

Loosen the belt tensioner on one side and set the belt on the pulley only one step further. Re-tension and control with try square. If not square, move one tooth more. It doesn´t matter on which side of the machine you execute this procedure as there is no "absolute" position of the belts on the pulleys.
Left and right side are connected through a massive steel shaft that runs from left to right in the back of the machine so the gantry will always move parallel to itself but it has to be set perpendicular to the side rails.

You should also control the pulleys before doing this whole operation. There is a slight possibility that a pulley became loose on the shaft (but very unlikely).

I would strongly suggest not to disassemble the whole setup as it is always good to retain sth for comparison, e.g. belt tension.
I tensioned the belt by touch / by ear, by comparing with the second belt.

As to my knowlegde it´s not possible to completely avoid the "crashing issue" as long as you´re on Lasercut 5.1.
I heard rumors that Lasercut 5.3 has a so called soft-stop feature that will stop the machine when there are drawing objects placed off the machining space. In LC 5.1 you should always press the "test" button on your machine before actually starting the laser job. The laser refuses to start the test run with data exceeding the worktable, but the stupid thing will happily start to cut with the same data and run over limits later :-(

Off-space objects are one reason for this bad behaviour of our lasers, bad data is another. Sometimes you can cure this by exporting your data using the hpgl format and importing back again. Sometimes there´s no cure because vector files are too large, contain bad/too many nodes or bad karma. E.g. DXF files from Illustrator CS are strictly to avoid. I could explain why but let me take my breakfast first :-)

[lauclick]

Smoe

Thanks for advices.
I will try to follow step by step.
I still have a doubt. How do I know from what I am keeping for comparison if is the right part of the whole setup? Any way I will give more tries hopefully I will succeed! I will let you know the results .

About the crashing issue it seems we have less problems than you have. I mean we never start a project by previously hitting the test button. We have checked an option in the lasercut 5.1 that every time if there are objects bigger than worktable area the laser will not start. So for us off space objects is not an issue. We still have problem with bad data which cause this crashes and I imagine we can not control this.

Thanks again
Laur