Hello all, I bought an ‘old’ ex school LS1290 a few months back. I’m new to lasers so I’ve had quite a learning curve to be where I am now but still looking to find out why my cuts are pretty average quality.
I’ve since retubed it, 100W and appropriate PSU, new Si Mirrors and focus lens. New controller, carraiges and bearings etc to basically like brand new motion and laser setup on it.
I’ve been having these issues with cuts where its mostly maxing out at around 5mm cut depths on most materials, anything deeper is practically no chance of managing. I’ve gone through the entire alignment multiple times, and it doesn’t seem to make much difference. I’ve tried 100% power settings down to even 5m/s but it’s extremely poor cut quality still. Am I expecting too much from this setup?
The one thing I forgot to mention is I am still using the same head on the gantry with the existing air assist nozzle setup that came stock on the machine, would it be advisable to change this to a more modern changed design at all? I’m also not sure if the mirrors are the correct style and focus lens either?
I’d suggest starting at 1 and checking the tube output before m1. Check it’s TEM00 resonance or mode. If it’s not in TEM00 mode, it will never align or work properly.
If it’s producing the correct output mode, then go through number 2…
If you run under or at the Ruida start speed, it will only produce minimum power… Are you using a minimum/maximum power settings?
Thankyou for that quite intriguing bit of information, i’ve never come across those modes before for resonance. I’ve checked and it looks like its in TEMm1 mode to my untrained eyes. Here is the image of what it has pulsed onto some tape, best I can do for now I’m afraid. Can I change this resonance mode at all?
Now regarding the ruida start speeds, I haven’t messed with any of the settings on the controller or via lightburn to write changes etc. I have played with min/max power settings when cutting but I may be doing those wrong. So for instance when I am cutting 2mm mdf I have found to cut at around 12mm/s between 40 and 60% power but I have both min/max set to the same power when I do.
So this is a fairly new tube(RECI T2), estimate around 15 hours on it so far now since installed. Cooling setup is a 20litre vat which is then actively cooled by a radiator and fan setup inline on the return, watching the temp sensors installed it ranges between 20 and 26C after an hour of use.
I run mine at about 18C. I think the 26C (80F) is a bit warm and suggest you get a better chiller. Might check out the vendor site and see if they manufacturer operational temperature area includes operating at 26C temperature.
It may be too much heat, or just a premature tube failure. RECI tubes are pretty much known to be about the best and at this power range, I’d expect better results from one.
Either way, I’d ask the vendor and see if they will replace it. All they can say it no.
There is no way for a user to correct this and even the factory considers this a terminal case for the tube.
I have a display cabinet with old radio tubes in it… my last co2 tube is in there with them. Even if they don’t work, they look kind of neat
Looking at this website/datasheet it currently says operating range between 2-40C. I purchased it via Cloudray on aliexpress so I shall send them a message explaining such and asking if they would consider this to be an early degredation/fault with the tube. Regarding mirrors and focus lens, would you consider there to be better/optimised variants for this type of tube?
