laser shutting down

[Linda Tetreault]

Hope someone can shed some light on this. I have about a gazillion pieces to cut out & every now & then the laser just shuts off. I have an Epilog 35w, it's vented to an outside shed, the power source is OK, I have a power strip with the compressor, laser & dust collector all plugged in & the laser is the only thing that shuts off. It comes back on in a few minutes but then I've lost the job, I can resend the portions of the design that are not cut, but my
major concern is doing damage to the equipment. I don't know what else to check!!
TIA Linda:confused:

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Linda;
I sent a reply earlier but don't know what happened to it. I'm not an Epilog guy but sounds like you have a thermal shutdown-must be a thermal overload switch somewhere which shuts down power when the laser gets too hot=probably only happens if you are running full power for a long time. Check your manual.
Solutions-shorten your cutting periods and let it cool down or aim a small fan at the laser fan intake grill. Good luck.
George

[Mike Kurtz]

Im glad Im not the only one having problems with this I have a Epilog 45 and it does the same thing. Do you use the USB port, I was thinking that it was losing communication when I was sending a print job. I have to restart the laser and resend the job and then most of the time it will move over the project without the laser beam on. It can sometime take 2 or 3 three times of sending the job before it actually start correctly. I even have instances of it running over the project a good 20 seconds before the laser comes on, As if the door was open.


Very confusing, even confuses the Epilog help desk...

[Keith Outten]

Linda,

Try plugging your laser directly into a receptacle, leave the DC and compressor in the power strip. You might consider moving the DC plug to another receptacle.

Don't use a battery backup system, I tried one and it only caused problems.

Hopefully the room temperature isn't too warm, my engraver will dump a running job when the temp is between 80-85 degrees F.

[Linda Tetreault]

George, That's what I finally did, & have had no more problems, it had happened a couple of times before & I assumed it was operator trouble.

Mike, I have the ethernet connection, had to change to install new firmware & this is the only problem I've had. When the machine shuts off it takes about 5 minutes before it will come on again, but I don't have to restart more than once.

Keith, my power strip has 5 outlets, 2 of them I can shut off independently, so I can turn off the exhaust if I'm not going to use it for a while, but I switched the laser to it's own outlet & hope it helps.

Thank you all for you help, I appreciate the help.
Linda

[Jerry Allen]

It does sound like a thermal problem. Do everything you can to increase airflow through and around the engraver.

I would leave the laser on the power strip if it is a surge suppressor. The electronics are vulnerable to electronic spikes and the blower is not. It's not too likely that that would help in this case anyway. What would happen is that you would kick a breaker if you were oveloading the circuit. And unless you had a real long cord, a bad junction, overload, there should not be any excess heat of any consequence generated.
Surge suppressors using metal oxide varistors generally stop working after time which depends on how "dirty" your power is. Every time they take a hit (surge), a hole gets punched through the dialectric. A line conditoner is more useful as well as a UPS which has voltage conditioning. Both must be rated higher than your laser which is probably pulling 10-15 amps which is too much for the average 650-750W UPS intended for a computer.

[Rodne Gold]

Sounds like a thermal shut down , the fact it happens when cutting almost guarantees that. If it were a power supply problem this would not only happen under cutting.

Take a can of compressed air (you can get them at photo/computer shops) and check the vents and fans around where the tube is and blow them out if dirty , more importantly check the fins etc on the tube and blow any dust off them , they are heat sinks. Try protect any mirrrors when doing this and give all the optics a clean after.
Adding an extra fan will help too. It's also pretty cheap to add an isolated dedicated clean line for the laser , any electrician worth thier salt can do it. To run a laser off a power conditioner requires that you get those humungous things filled with batteries that convert ac to dc and then back to ac. It does help with quality of engraving if you do have a serious power fluctuation problem and it also allows you to keep engraving if the power shuts off (debatable value)
Regards

[Linda Tetreault]

Epilog monitors this site & Peck called wednesday, said he followed this thread & Epilog wanted to upgrade the power source. Thursday I received the new power source, it has been installed & the laser is purring again. I really appreciate the way this was handled, cause I have to admit I thought the problem was probably operator trouble. When I'm busy enough to need a 2nd machine, it's gonna be an Epilog!! Linda