80W Laser Cutter update

[Ken Runner]

Wednesday night we had a crew of 4 working on the Rabbit Laser.  We pulled the laser bed out and performed a much needed cleaning and then went through a recalibration.  There was a lot of debris built up on the supports for the bed that had to be wired brushed off.  We also gave it a good vacuuming.

This should keep the unit running well for a bit.  We do need to adopt a regular maintenance schedule as far as cleaning the mirrors and lenses and making sure everything is working well.  It will be posted at the laser with dates.  I'll also be putting together a video on how to do proper maintenance of the unit that will be posted to the website and facebook.

If you experience any problems with the Rabbit Laser please post to this group so that we can work on keeping the unit in good running order.  The new laser tube is supposed to be good for 8000+ hours and I know we probably didn't get a quarter of that from the previous tube.

We probably need to adjust the power and speed settings that we had recorded in the book as I suspect many of them are off now with the new tube and premium mirrors we are now using.  If you find the values in the book are burning your material, them adjust speed and/or power levels and retry.  If you find new settings that work better than those in the book then update the book.  You should always use a small section of your material to test before running your job to verify engrave and cut functionality and to avoid wasting material.

We are still having issues with the latches, but are working with Rabbit to get that resolved.

Thanks for your help in maintaining the equipment that serves our community.