Choosing Laser Power Supply: Cloudray or Lightobject?

mcdanlj · September 18, 2020, 1:45am

I’m looking at two possible laser power supplies for my DIY build that I appear to be getting serious about building…

$215 + unknown shipping from lightobject:
https://www.lightobject.com/Laser-Power-Supply/80W-90W-PWM-CO2-Laser-Power-Supply

$116 + unknown shipping from cloudray; $144 shipped in the US from several ebay sellers:

I can find manual online for the cloudray version, but not the lightobject version. Other than the lightobject looking cooler, it’s not obvious that it’s better. Is there something I’m missing here?

donkjr · September 2, 2020, 12:46pm

Could be a difference in warranty. I could not find the warranty on the Cloudray.

HalfNormal · September 2, 2020, 1:50pm

A cursory glance at the Cloudray supply looks like the standard mass produced laser supply. Quality has always been hit or miss on them. Not sure why the ones that have gone bad on me are the ones that come with the laser. The replacement for the K40 is still up and running. A second one that failed on my 60 watt was warrantied by the seller and it has been holding up ever since. I have a spare but have not had to use it.

mcdanlj · September 2, 2020, 2:55pm

I note that the LO version will be maxed out with an 80W W2 tube, whereas the DY13 is so named because it goes up to 130W AFAICT so I’d be running it at the low end of its design spec. Looks like about 40% markup for a 1 year warranty. Cloudray says their warranty is “fantastic” without anything about how long it is, and given the original etymology of the word “fantastic” maybe it’s true!

Are Vevor supplies essentially the same inside as the Cloudray supplies?

cprezzi · September 5, 2020, 8:34am

I bought the Cloudray one with the display:

It’s very conveniant to have the display

mcdanlj · September 27, 2020, 1:52am

Thanks!

Did they really use an ethernet port as a way to mount two LEDs on the board‽

Is the digital current reading accurate? It wouldn’t matter much for me (at this point) because my (current) design doesn’t let me mount the PS where the display would be visible anyway, but I’m curious since I know that in general the advice here has been to install an analog ammeter and not trust digital.

donkjr · September 5, 2020, 2:35pm

If I ever upgrade my power I would likely buy this supply. I would have recommended it earlier but could not find it. The one downside is that I have not opened one up and captured the internal circuitry so we don’t know what is in it.

I never really understood the function of the Ethernet port on this supply but I suspect it could be a serial control port perhaps for manufacturing.

I think the status display is useful and it doesn’t seem to increase the cost.

mcdanlj · September 5, 2020, 3:09pm

I wondered whether it was modbus. They have other supplies with modbus but I didn’t see any mention of it in the product listing… There is a more expensive supply with modbus and remote display, too.

It looked to me like the display added $4 to the cost when I followed the bread crumbs back and clicked on many of the items on that page.

mcdanlj · September 5, 2020, 4:42pm

Found it again. It doesn’t say “modbus”. I don’t know what “special serial port” is. Maybe SPI? It doesn’t say whether it runs modbus or something else at the protocol level.

mcdanlj · September 27, 2020, 1:59am

Now that I’ve ordered most of the mechanical parts, I look at the relatively small difference between an 80W Reci W2 tube and a 100W Reci W4 tube and realize that if I’m going to have a wart off the right side to hold control electronics, a smaller wart on the back side to hold a longer tube would not be crazy. 100 or 200mm would do the trick; it’s a 1400mm tube and tube and first mirror head assembly together have 1540mm so a tube wart is probably called for.

That power supply can supply 28KV (the W4 triggering voltage) and 100W, and I wouldn’t want to push the tube past its continuous rating anyway.

mcdanlj · October 11, 2020, 7:22pm

@cprezzi are you using that MYJG-100W with the Reci W4 that you mentioned running in the Lasersaur?

cprezzi · October 12, 2020, 5:04pm

We bought it together with a W4 tube as spare parts for the lasersaur, but they are not yet in use.

mcdanlj · October 12, 2020, 8:00pm

I’m confused…

What tube and LPS are you currently running?

Thanks!

cprezzi · October 13, 2020, 6:19pm

We still use the 4 years old RECI Z4 tube with a RECI DY13 LPS.

mcdanlj · November 10, 2020, 12:14am

The MYJG-100W shipped with lots of HV wire and an HV coupling set. It’s probably too late to return the wire I bought from amazon early on. It was also very well packed.

mcdanlj · November 23, 2020, 2:37am

I didn’t trace out the schematic but I satisfied my curiosity in other respects regarding the insides.

It comes apart easily with two small philips screws on each side, but the harness for the display is short and the harness needs to be disconnected from the board to remove the lid. Sorry I didn’t realize that this picture was blurry; I’m not planning to pull it apart again to get a better shot:

After removing the connector blocks, disconnecting the fan, and removing five more philips screws from the board, the board lifts out with only some gentle work moving the anode and cathode lines around.

Here’s a few shots of the circuit board (sadly, the picture I thought I took of the whole top of the board I apparently failed to actually take, so that’s missing here):

The RJ-45 jack is clearly there for remote display. It shares its net with the display header.

On the bottom (sorry for the glare) you might be able to see at the lower right that the six-pin horizontal header near right on the bottom of the picture has traces going to the staggered set of eight pins on the RJ-45 jack at lower part of the right side of the board:

Then there’s the back side of the display:

It has an annoyingly unlabeled chip:

In the Monocle, it happens to fit nearly perfectly with M4 screws and DITNs on the rail under the laser tube:

I had not been sure how I was going to mount it, but now I know!