New 50W YAG keeps tripping power circuit.

[Ross lagden]

Hi guys,

Everytime I plug my YAG laser into the mains it trips the circuit on the fuse box. Does anyone have any idea why it is doing this? If you have any ideas I would be really grateful.

Thanks,

Ross

[Rodne Gold]

Bad ground , short circuit in wiring , earth leakage, laser power supply not grounded , bad cable , bad plug , too many devices on the plug circuit...you got to trace it down.Get a sparky in.

[George M. Perzel]

Rodne;
You forgot- dead mouse over the input power terminals

[Bruce Boone]

If it has a water cooling unit or air handler on the same circuit, that might be enough to push it over the top.

[Craig Matheny]

Plug it into its own dedicated circuit to see if that solves your issue. Sounds like overloaded circuit or you could have as Rodne said or if the breaker is old could be worn out needs to be replaced

[matthew knott]

does it trip as soon as you plug it or is it when you try to operate it, if the trip is going as soon as you plug it in them something is very wrong, is it a lamp pumped or didoe? I would check the plug wiring to start with!

[Ross lagden]

All solved now, it was a problem with the plug wiring because the cable is really thick. Now I just need to find out how to actually use the laser with the ezcad software as I have no idea how to even get it to Mark something :/

[matthew knott]

Nice one, ive had a play with ezcad, it seemed ok to use, what make laser did you go for ?

[Ross lagden]

Its a Chinese YAG Laser, I am really having trouble with how you actually get the laser to fire though. Any ideas?

[matthew knott]

they are normally a bit complex as they are made up of different core components made by many manufacturers, i would in this order
Turn on the chiller it should be running at about 22 deg C ish
there should be a q-switch control that needs to be on and a laser (lamp/diode) psu, this needs to be on
Check for any interlocks that need to be made, i would think being chinese they are wired out anyway.
When all this is on you need to be sure the software is talking to the laser and galvo head, i would import a file, set the power to 90% speed slow, 50mm/Second and frequency at 6khz. Mark a bit of scrap metal, its needs to be in focus, if your not withing about 4mm of the correct height it will do nothing, you would then wind the laser up and down till its marking best, (you will know, be loud and bright). Its hard to tell you exactly what to do but make sure you have all the leads connected up that came with it, miss one and it wont work.
Matt

[Ross lagden]

I imported something into ezcad but I cant see any settings for speed and power on the software, I hit the button that says mark and I can see a red light moving backwards and fowards on the metal like its marking but its not doing anything, I have tried moving it up and down but I cant see the laser.

[Ross lagden]

Ok, I have got it marking now but I am finding that because the imported BMP has a white background it is thinking that it is a solid block and not doing the image that is inside. What can I do to stop it from picking up the white background?

[Bruce Boone]

If you are able to set laser power by color, simply set white as 0% power and black to 100% power and the various levels of gray to corresponding powers.

[matthew knott]

my advise would be leave the bitmaps alone and import a vector graphic, its going to be 99% of your work! you need to play with the software a bit, learn how to fill things and find where you set the power and freqency of the laser, we pretty much run everything at 70% power to start, the frequency will have the biggest effect, 6-10khz is a good start point, if you want a balck mark higher frequencys work better 50khz and slow the galvos right down, hope you have 1064nm saftey glasses!

[Bruce Boone]

My system is run by graphics output through Inkscape, which does .svg files. Inkscape is a free program that has excellent bitmap to vector conversion. It's much better than Corel and Illustrator and others in that regard.