by dbdbd2000 » Mon Apr 22, 2013 7:29 pm
Just a few questions that i am sure that would be useful to many people building a laser cutter and of reference when searching.
My laser cutter is based on the gutted internals of one of the chinese engravers found via ebay. It has been cutting fine for at least a year making mdf models, although needed a fair amount of work to get it to work nicely via mach3. (i'll find some photos of my builds)
the original laser power supply i have doesn't support pwm and is a simple on-off trigger, with a pot for varying the current. there is also no mA meter inline with the tube return, only a 0-3A on the front connected to control board.
---------------------------------
now comes the problem
"Today whilst cutting the first half was fine and then the current just dropped away, increasing the pot made no difference to the output and now it will only occasionally fire on minimum current. I believe this is a dead flyback transformer for the power supply as it happened so quickly and the tube was definitely not overheated as cooling was fine."
--------------------------------
If this is the agreed consensus i will be buying another and posting the results, or if there is any easy way to check that this is what is wrong?
I was going to buy either a 40w or 60w supply
my question is with the 40w max 15kv 20ma or 60w 35kv 24ma power supplies
would buying a 60w cause any problems running a 40w tube as long as i kept the current withing the 18ma tube spec even with the higher running voltage.
would this be better in lifespan or harder for fine control (ie welding, higher current machines not always the best as lack fine control for thin material)
i'm mostly thinking if i want to upgrade to 60w in the future (not very likely) as more keen to get the pwm working for raster with a dsp.
Thanks for any input
Last edited by
dbdbd2000 on Tue Apr 30, 2013 12:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.