FSL 5th Gen not marking material

[Douglas Kendall]

My laser is 3 yrs old & was barely marking material. I replaced the tube (it fires great) & there is still no marking of the material when I raster or vector. I aligned the mirrors twice & all seems well there, however the laser still does not mark the material. All else seems to be working correctly; water, air, magnet safety switch, motors & laser firing. However ther are NO MARKS on my material; wood, acrylic or paper. ALL of my test fires for alignment are good, please tell me what I am missing here.

[Matt McCoy]

Do you have a good beam through the lens onto thermal paper?

Are you you test firing on the control panel or software?

[Mike Troncalli]

If your tube is firing (nice big purple stream) and your alignment is good and you are marking thermal paper then it sounds like your actual lens may have an issue. Have you removed it and looked at it ?

[Dave Sheldrake]

First place to check, is there a beam coming out of the tube

Follow the optical train, Tube / Mirror1 / Mirror2 / Mirror3 / Final Lens / Material.

[AL Ursich]

Do you bypass the interlock switch to test fire leading to actual job and having a bad switch or missing magnet? Hence no beam...

AL

[Douglas Kendall]

Thx all, I spent a little time with it again & it was driving me nuts! It would be aligned & I would go thru it again & it wouldn't be! Also the raster in software would not give me a estimated time or even try to raster. I was able to vector finally, which gave me hope. I have a nice purple stream & i pulled mirror 2 & verified that it was good (that's where it seemed to drop off.) Also I was using both software & control panel to test fire.I did notice I kept losing connection so I pulled my Ethernet cable & turned it around, (I may need to replace it) although I did get to raster (with an estimated time) & vector both. Something is still messed up tho but I'm making progress! For the moment I'm guessing it may have been a combination of alignment, Ethernet cable & or software. By the way, my alignment beam if that's what it's called seems to be moving, is that piece supposed to be glued into place or what? I want to get it secured properly & get this baby fine tuned so I can make some smoke! lol. Thx again everyone for your replies. I feel bad that I tried so many different times & then got it working (somewhat) AFTER I posted! Like I say tho, it's not perfect but I'm happier now that it is showing promise.

[Matt McCoy]

Here's the alignment video.

http://youtu.be/pajHlcezujU