Dead laser.

[Steve Baker]

Turned on the lasersaur this morning, tried to cut something - but no laser.

Everything else works. There seems to be power to the laser power supply
and I can see volts on the relevent signal wires.

One big clue is that the laser power supply fan isn't spinning...so I
presume that means that the power supply is the problem and not the laser
tube.

So is it likely that the entire power supply has died? Do you think it's
worth trying to replace the fan? And as a long-shot, is there a fuse in
there someplace I could maybe have blown?

-- Steve

[Ward Elder]

A switching type power supply will have no power even for the fan if anything is wrong inside or if the external load is to high (shorted out). I don't think it is a fan issue. Try disconnecting the Laser to see if the supply spins up.


Thank you,


Ward M. Elder
Eldersoft
42 Appleton St.
Winnipeg, MB
R2G1K5
(204) 791-7754   (Cell)
wa...@eldersoft.ca

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[Steve Baker]

Thanks for the suggestion...so it could possibly be the laser tube?
It's hard to imagine how it could short out - but who knows?

I'll do that test when I get home tonight.

Close examination of the fan reveals quite a bit of crud on it...I'm
surprised that any significant amount of smoke could have gotten into the
laser bay to do that.

Coletech want $550 for a replacement 100W power supply with $120 shipping.
That seems like an awful lot for a power supply. Does anyone know of a
cheaper substitute?

-- Steve

-- Steve

[Kevin Verelst]

That seems expensive indeed, as far as I know, the 100w PSU is the DY13 which is supplied by plenty of Chinese sellers. 

Price seems to be around 150dollar on alibaba/aliexpress, no clue about shipping though.

[Steve Baker]

Yeah - you're right - I see them out there for $250 shipped.

We'll hunt around.

Since we're building another laser cutter anyway - we're going to need
another power supply - so I might as well buy it early and then if it
turns out that the PSU wasn't the problem, I'm not out of pocket.

So if it's not the power supply - then what failure mode of a laser tube
could cause this?

The machine was working OK last night - nobody touched it until we powered
it on this morning...it's hard to see how a wiring problem or a short
could have developed overnight.

-- Steve

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[Ward Elder]

Capacitors dry out/ fail all the time. The heat/cool of power on/off causes power supplies to fail all the time. PC's left powered on 24/7 seldom have power supply failures. That is as long as the cooling system stays clean!
Thank you
Ward Elder
Eldersoft
(204) 791-7754

[Steve Baker]

Update: Disconnecting the laser tube did nothing - replacing the fan did
nothing - so we obviously have a dead power supply. Diagnosing/repairing
beyond this point seems futule. I found DY13 110volt for W4 100W lasers
selling online for as little as $150, and when I chatted with the rep
online and dithered about whether I wanted it or not, she dropped to $140!

But delivery times were sketchy - so we ended up paying a little over $200
to get more clearly stated shipping times.

I think we should seriously consider the idea of leaving the power supply
turned on 24/7...but I dunno about fault conditions though - might there
be circumstances when the laser could power up without other subsystems
being on? At least we'd have to leave the Arduino powered up too...it's
not exactly a heavy power drain compared to chiller, air-assist and
extractor fan.

[Ward Elder]

For an well-made power supply running a PC I don't mind leaving it on
all the time. For a 100Watt Chinese made brick melter... I think you
should turn it off when no one is around to keep an eye on it.

Thank you,


Ward M. Elder

ElderSoft

42 Appleton St.
Winnipeg, MB
R2G1K5
(204) 791-7754 (Cell)

wa...@eldersoft.ca

[cw&t]

similar thing happened to us.

Our power supply started sparking, so we tried to bandaid the problem by wrapping the problematic wire with electrical tape. Today the wire burned through and killed itself. The surge protector going to it died too.  I'm assuming something in the PSU is permanently short circuiting now.

  

Che-Wei Wang [pron. say-way]
+1-718-757-2247
cwwang.com | cwandt.com