Brand new power supply, bright purple tube, but practically no beam output

[Robin Croen]

Hi folks, hoping someone can help me diagnose a problem.

I just installed a brand new power supply from cloudray. The power supply has a nice little screen with a digital milliamp meter, and I've also got an analogue meter on my machine. When I pulse the beam I get readings I would expect from both meters and my tube lights up with a strong purple glow, but I'm getting practically zero output. I put some tape at the end of the tube to rule out any optics alignment issues and there is only the faintest hint of burning on the tape. I checked that the min power on the controller is set high enough to get output and that didn't help. I tried running a file that has worked in the past and that also had no output.

This is the power supply I purchased to replace one that was shorting out:
https://www.cloudraylaser.com/products/150w-co2-laser-power-supply-myjg-150-led?variant=45460421000

I should note that this is a fairly old tube and I had been noticing some power reduction when I used it last, which was several months ago. Is it typical for a dead tube to still be lighting up purple? Is there something else I could be missing?

Thanks for the help!

[Bill George]

You have a 150 watt machine? Why did you replace the PS?

[Robin Croen]

You have a 150 watt machine? Why did you replace the PS?

I have a 150w peak/130w max tube. The power supply I replaced was also a 150w PS, which I replaced because it was shorting.

I suspect this was due to user error and I allowed some metal shavings to get into the old PS. It popped and arced inside the PSU so I shut the machine down immediately and eventually opened up the PS to see if I could clean out the cause of the short or at least see if I could find the issue. I vacuumed and blew out the circuit board and re-installed the old PS and tested with the pulse button but was still getting the short, so that's when I scrapped the old PS and ordered the new one.