Laser Machine Service & Repair near Ipswich, HPC Laserscripts

Laser Machine Service & Repair near Ipswich on a HPC Laserscript 3060 – 60 watt & a HPC Laserscript 1290 80 watt – Hadleigh School

A visit to a customer, Hadleigh High School was requested by our partner RS Design and Technology as the customer had that their HPC laser machine was not engraving correctly. The laser repair of the HPC machine was conducted by our highly experienced service engineer ‘Gavin Edwards’. The laser repair visit included: –

HPC Laserscript Service – 1290 80 watt

Upon arrival at Hadleigh High School the 1290 HPC machine was visually inspected.

The laser beam was inspected and it was seen to be producing a double line when cutting. The main focusing lens was inspected and was found to have a small section of the protective coating missing. The lens was replaced and the rest of the optical path was inspected and cleaned.

The remaining items were completed with some only minor issues-

• Inspect, Clean and Lubricate all Linear/Guide Rails
• Inspect, Clean and tension belts
• Drained, flushed and refilled chiller with distilled water
• Calibrate Bed Level
• Cleaned Rear Exhaust
• Disabled the Z-Autofocus as Issue on 3060 below
• Inspected Interlocks and Chiller Alarms
• Inspected and checked electrics, sensors and switches
• Safety Interlocks Inspection & Test

The laser power was measured at the exit aperture of the nozzle and was shown to be reading 94.68w @75%, there was no milliammeter to read.

Several of the customer jobs were run on the machine to check it’s overall function, on running the inline fan that was being used for the extraction it was noted and discussed with the customer that the unit may need to be upgraded to a larger fan as the unit was struggling to remove the smoke from the laser chamber.

HPC Laserscript – 3060 60 watt – Repair 1st Visit

The second HPC machine at the school was then looked into as the customer had said that a teacher had requested the machine do a auto focus, although there as no auto focus method on the machine. This caused the machine raise the work table and had collided the material with the laser head. Following on from this, when the machine was tested by the customer, the machine was exhibiting a double mark when engraving. The machine would also not communicate with the laptop.

The machine was inspected, the machine was only 17 months old, but had only run a limited number of jobs. The optical path was inspected, the mirrors and lens did require a light clean but were all acceptable.

The Y gantry was making a soft grinding noise when moving back. This issue was sourced as the Y belts being very loose. These belts were tensioned and the noise and movement were significantly improved.

A number of different reasons could provide symptoms of double marking. Alignment was checked and was adjusted slightly. It was ensured that the laser beam was travelling through the centre of the nozzle, as the beam clipping the side of the nozzle and producing a reflection is a cause of double marking. In this case the laser beam was perfectly central in all areas of the laser bed.

The laser power was measured at the exit aperture of the nozzle and was shown to be reading 54w @90%, there was no milliammeter to read.

The engineer connected his laptop to the machine but it would not connect properly. This was investigated further, it was found that the machine had a USB hub, as the machine was fitted with a camera, which also did not work. Several different cable configurations were tested and the issue was found to be with the USB hub, it was also noted that the cable from the laser to the laptop was too long at 4.5m in length with also an extension of 1m in length. The engineer used his 3.5m cable and the connection was easily established. The customer said that they would source a shorter USB cable.

As the initial error had been caused with the auto focus feature on the Ruida Controllers being triggered even though no auto focus device was fitted, the autofocus feature was disabled within the HMI software on both machines to avoid this particular issue happening again.

To show the issue with the double engraving several test files were run. Some cutting files were tested to start with. All of these cut fine. Some engraving trials were then run and the double engraving could easily be seen.

A number of different resolutions were investigated including: –

• Different setting with the controller setup
• Backlash setting
• Different controller files from a different laser machine
• Checked the belts tension, no movement on the laser hed
• Used both RDworks and Lightburn
• Swapped around the X & Y drivers
• Installed a new Ruida 6442 controller
• Changed the control method of when the laser would fire

All of these failed to resolve the issue. The only method that solved the issue was turning off Bi-directional marking, This worked for marking in both directions. This normally only resolves the issue of backlash of scanner correction. To test this theory the marking was attempted in the Y direction. The issue still remained. The only items that weren’t able to be swapped out were the motors and laser PSU.

A re-visit would be required when the spare parts had been sourced.

HPC Laserscript – 3060 60 watt – Repair 2nd Visit

A replacement motor had been sourced and a spare laser PSU was taken to site to swap out and test for a resolution.

The engineer arrived on site and connected the new motor directly to the motor driver. The testing showed that the issue was still present. So the original motor was reinstalled.

Installed a new 60 watt laser PSU for testing. again the fault remained. So reinstalled the original laser PSU.

The issues was discussed with the teachers and technicians. The decision was made to remove the machine from the school to be able to take the machine to the workshop and work on the machine in a more appropriate environment and to save the customer on return visits.

HPC Laserscript – 3060 60 watt – Workshop Repair

The HPC machine was setup in the Thinklaser workshop for continued testing into the issue of double marking when engraving.

The investigation lead to look primarily at the motor controllers. Each dip-switch was inspected as to the settings. It was noted that the a smoothing filter had been applied of 25ms which is a maximum for the dip switch orientation.. Dip-Switches SW9 and SW10 were set to disable the smoothing filter and this resolved the problem. Several test were run on the machine and also several configurations of the dip-switches between the X and Y gantry motor drivers.

This configuration setting is normally factory set and therefore not required to be adjusted on site, during installation or servicing of the units. So it was deemed that this must have been present when the machine was in production and was not picked up in production or in subsequent testing.

The machine was sent several soak testing files to ensure that the issue had been properly resolved.

HPC Laserscript – 3060 60 watt – Final Visit

Delivered the now repaired HPC laserscript 3060 machine to Hadleigh High School. Several of the customers files were run on the machine infront of the customer. The customer was happy with the results.

The customer did have an issue with their PC sending jobs to the machine, the controller drivers were re-installed onto the customer PC and they could now send jobs to the laser. Everything was tested and was all per specifications.

Any of the consumable items mentioned above, Lens, Mirrors, Laser tubes, Power supplies are all available and can be bought separately in our online shop.

If you would like further information on our Laser Machine Service & Repair near Ipswich capabilities or anywhere else in the country, or any other Laser Training requirement or Laser Application, please request a call back or, talk to one of our service engineering specialists by going to our contact page – link below.

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