Sept 30th 2019 - Laser Working and Aligned - WAS Laser Cutter Appears to be Misaligned. Placing it Out of Order

[alimjiwa]

I went to use the laser today at around 7pm and noticed some strange behavior that I’m assuming is due to alignment issues.

It seems to be the out of focus in the middle of the bed in the X axis (ie. making wide/double lines), but in focus at x=0, and x=max

left side cut:

middle cut:

It also appears to dramatically lose power as it moves toward the right side of the bed (i.e. toward x = 0)

left side engrave:

right side engrave (same settings):

Things I checked:
My material was clamped down and flat
Laser head was properly focused for correct material thickness
Laser head appears not to be bent or broken

I assume this is an out of order type thing, so I put an out of order sign on it.

[TristanL]

Yes I noticed some similar behavior in my really quick test the other day, we are hopefully going to be aligning it this week. Thanks for putting an out of order sign, as it isn’t really usable until it’s fixed.

[Majicj]

Thanks to @lukecyca for showing @TristanL and myself some general maintenance for the laser.

We

• replaced the water in the cooler which was grungy and only about half full.
• Fixed the leak in the cooler where the copper piping enters the cooler.
• Cleaned all the laser mirrors
• Aligned the laser mirrors

We tested engraving and cutting in all four corners of the laser cutter bed and everything looks good.

Still to be done is a review of all the laser filters and see what needs to be rotated/replaced but we will leave that for another day.

Happy lasering!

[lukecyca]

Just want to add that we used JB Water Weld to fix the leak in the water chiller. We suspected the leak was right around the copper refrigerant tubing as it enters/exits the water reservoir. JB Water Weld is quite hard to work with, especially since it’s hard to get in and clean the surfaces properly in this chiller, but has the nice property that you can refill it with water immediately and it’ll set underwater. We applied liberally.

Anyways, should probably keep an eye on that chiller. Every time it gets banged around or moved its liable to develop a leak because the strain of the entire evaporator is on that seal.