vl-200 problem

[Chris Achtschin]

I have a Versalaser VL-200 30 Watt laser.
I was lasering some bricks, ended the job, everything ended correctly.
I then went to a previous job on the driver and the problem starts:
With the door open, everything works correctly, x and y and z moves as directed. Red dot shows as well.
When I close the door the fan on the tube stops and I hear a chattering noise in the laser interior. The red light to the top left of the power button flashes.
If I unplug the tube, all goes well.
I checked the power supply in all cases and it reads 48VDC.
Does this sound like a bad tube?
Any help will be appreciated.... I only have 1 more brick Ughh.
Thanks,
Chris

[Lee DeRaud]

I have a Versalaser VL-200 30 Watt laser.
I was lasering some bricks, ended the job, everything ended correctly.
I then went to a previous job on the driver and the problem starts:
With the door open, everything works correctly, x and y and z moves as directed. Red dot shows as well.
When I close the door the fan on the tube stops and I hear a chattering noise in the laser interior. The red light to the top left of the power button flashes.
If I unplug the tube, all goes well.
I checked the power supply in all cases and it reads 48VDC.
Does this sound like a bad tube?
Any help will be appreciated.... I only have 1 more brick Ughh.
Thanks,
Chris

That's exactly what happened with my last tube. Turned out to be a short in the tube assembly: everything worked fine with the door open, but when you closed the door, the tube enabled, shorted, and drove the power supply into overcurrent shutdown.

That tube was about two months old when it faulted. The symptoms arose after I replaced a power supply that blew up...there's still doubt in several people's minds whether (1) the power supply blew up and cooked something in the tube, or (2) the tube shorted and took out the old supply. In any case ULS replaced the tube under warranty, and I paid for the (gloriously overpriced) P/S.

Yours appears to have died rather more gracefully than mine. It's (remotely) possible your P/S is bad, specifically in the overcurrent protection circuit, but I'm not sure I'd take that bet. If you want to try replacing the P/S, they're available for about $125 third-party, or $450+ from ULS. Might be worth a shot if your tube is out of warranty.

[Chris Achtschin]

Thanks Lee.
Tube is out of warranty, I had it recharged 15 months ago.
Sounds like the tube is pooped, I'll send it out to get reared/recharged, they will check it just in case it might be good.
i hope that the power supply wouldn't take out a recharged tube. I did get a 48v reading on the power supply.
I wonder if doing the bricks are a contributing factor, 100 power for 20 minutes.

[Lee DeRaud]

I wonder if doing the bricks are a contributing factor, 100 power for 20 minutes.

Don't know. I ran the tube that failed at 100% for several hours of 90% duty cycle: about 3 minutes of engraving at a time, then 25-30 seconds to load up the next batch.

Then again, I'm pretty sure I (ab)used its predecessor a lot harder when I was spending hours at a time cutting 1/4" MDF to build my CNC machine...some of those jobs ran over an hour each cutting full sheets full of intricate parts. Now, that was all vector rather than raster, but if my understanding of stepper motors is correct, they pull roughly the same current regardless of how fast or slow they're stepping, so it's not like the P/S got overstressed.

In theory the P/S has both overtemp and overcurrent protection, but the new one is the only one that ever showed that protection in action. Note that ULS changed P/S vendors at some point...do you know which one your has? (Old one was made by XPiQ, which I believe is either out of business or got swallowed up by a larger fish. The new ones are made by Meanwell.)

[EDIT: after rereading the earlier thread, I realized that the engraving job I describe in the first paragraph above was just before the tube got replaced. It had over five years on it at that point, so I doubt that's what killed it. The new tube had done a couple hours of cutting, but that's all.

[Lee DeRaud]

If you're curious, here's the thread on mine: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...L200&highlight=
The part that relates to your problem starts at post #26.

[Chris Achtschin]

Thanks Lee,
I dropped it off at Evergreen along with the power supply.
I hope to hear soon, I really think it's the tube.

[Lee DeRaud]

Thanks Lee,
I dropped it off at Evergreen along with the power supply.
I hope to hear soon, I really think it's the tube.

Tube would be my guess at this point, but I still have my repaired XPiQ supply: PM me if you need it.

[Chris Achtschin]

Ended up being 2 RF Transistors on the internal circuit board in the tube.
I'm back in business!
Thanks for your input!