I used donner last week and had a great time. In fact, its been one of the more stable lasers in my opinion.
Today i tried to etch on donner and it was not acting right. I used the exact same project and settings as last time but the results are not the same. Ive attempted to modify my settings but im not having any luck achieving my past results.
My last attempt i had my power at 70% and the speed at 5 and i was not able to cut through my material. Last time, on the same material it was able to slice through at 50% and 20 speed.
The etch is much lighter and i am not able to make a decent inlet.
Im hoping its a simple setting that i am overlooking. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
Hello, Corbin.
Almost always a dirty mirror and lens.
Requires someone who is trained on optics cleaning to fix.
Thank you for notifying us.
If you are still there, please place a note on Donner saying “Laser needs optics cleaned. Not cutting through material. @Team_Laser has been notified on Talk.”
I can tell you that Team Laser is starting up Optics Cleaning classes. We’re deputizing members for this routine maintenance in the hopes the machines will perform more consistently. All other maintenance still belongs with folks with more training, which can be gained working along side other maintainers. See Maintenance Day on First Sundays.
Also would be good to mark the machine as down so no one else uses it until it’s inspected, the laser tube is still putting out the same energy, if that energy is not making it to the work piece that means it’s getting dissipated somewhere else and something is getting hotter than it should be.
A 5-10% degradation due to slightly dirty optics/mirrors would be normal, but an over 4x reduction in cutting power is more alarming
I left a “donner is acting funky” note on the info sign before i got out. Ill put more detailed info on a sign next time i run into a situation like this.
20 minutes later when someone went to use it, the Z height adjustment is grinding and barely moving. I found the bed was out of the pegs, but it’s still doing the same thing after I adjusted it. I don’t see anything specific wrong and need to head home.
I asked @talkers to take a look if he has time. Otherwise, someone needs to put the out of service sign back.
I checked all the obvious stuff about 1:00 PM today. The gold set screw for locking focus was loose so i focused and thightened that. Air assist was on. The results were still really low power. I left a note on Donne saying it was out of service and and talkied told Scott, and left for a doc appt. the grinding bed syndrome occurred a couple weeks ago. Patrick (the Woodworker) and I cleaned the the screw level let in the left rear corner and it fixed the grinding.
We’ve got a thermometer type one and were doing power tests on maintenance days. Can’t speak to when the most recent one was done, but maintenance logs are recorded here… Laser Committee/Maintenance History - Dallas Makerspace