I was in the middle of etching and the Donner laser stop firing. I’ve tried restarting the machine and that has not helped. Please help! 
I’m not sure because I don’t know what the issue was before. 🫣 Hope it’s fixable because as of now there is only one laser working as far as I know.
The lasers appear to be in worse shape than I’ve ever seen them over the past 5 years, in terms of up-time and operating precision. Is the issue primarily with parts availability? preventive maintenance and repair? With regard to demand/usage, back around 2018 when our laser user numbers were notably higher than they are today, the machines were reliably online and operational. Granted, Donner and Blitzen were newer then.
I’ve been in the space a few times over the last month or two, mainly to use the lasers. My experience mirrors your concern.
Not just age has changed the lasers, the software we use to run the lasers has changed as well. This may also be a cause for issue.
When using RD works, you often needed to use the controls on the laser to move the head, set anchor points and adjust focus. This puts the operator in a position to spot problems before they happen as they are standing over the machine driving the head. Though it was also a point of confusion in training. With the light burn software I’ve noticed members driving the head of the laser from the computers, this leads to people moving the head then having to get up and see where it moved to. Rather than, watching the head while moving it. I would bet this separation from the user watching while moving has lead to more issues with head collision. An issue I’ve noticed even in my short time at the DMS recently.
We may have also lost many of our more common power users of the laser with the down turn in membership. You know the users that were knowledgeable in fixing and adjusting the laser, that would often correct things for their projects on the laser before they got so far out of spec to need larger repair. But, often were not on the official repair group. Things like minor bed leveling or wiping down the drive belts and ways or blowing out the optics or mirrors. Just less membership ownership of tools and their maintenance.
Those would be my guesses in addition to age of the machines. The lasers are a cool tool that present as simple to learn and use. We may need to lean in and incentivize growing the power user group again so more people around the space can service and repair them. That way more issues are corrected at the time of the issue rather than posted and waiting for others to correct them later.
Personally I think it’s a whole combination of things…
As has been pointed out, the machines are getting a bit older and I’ve had a fair bit of use. I think they need a bit more pre-emptive maintenance and the like.
Another big issue that I see is that a lot of people kind of seem to not care about them anymore as much. A lot of people definitely do, but I’ve seen a lot of people that just don’t bother cleaning properly after themselves, don’t report issues, or otherwise have the mentality of ‘not my problem’/well I want it working now, so I’m going to use it anyways even if it seems to be having a small issue. If the lenses get dust/dirt/smoke on them, and they don’t get cleaned quickly enough and people keep using them, the lenses end up getting ruined and we need to completely replace them.
I’m not sure if some of this is a failure to train people properly (in maintenance or use), or if it’s that when things break they aren’t getting fixed quick enough due to lack of volunteers or parts, or if it’s just people -shrug-
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Donner’s new power supply required a splice and the high voltage leaked out. Ordered some insulation and should have it up in a day or so (yes, I did insulate it with high voltage boots we already had, but they didn’t do the trick)
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Donner is functional again (with 100% less electricity leakage!)
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