X2-660 superspeed big problems

[Juan Blandon]

Hi, my names is Juan and i am a new member. I just want to tell you a big problem that we have with a X2-660 superspeed engraver from Universal Laser. Maybe someone can help us. This machine was bought at about one and the half year ago. From the begining, this machine never works good. Sometimes the engraver works hours, days or two weeks, then the machine burn a IC on the "motor control board" (the ic L298N). The Universal laser support send us the complete kit (CPU and Driver board). we changed it and the same history, burn the Driver board. The universal laser support said us that there was a electrical problem. We really found a electrical problem but it was fix it and the problem was not change. Finally we moved all the installation to another factory in a different city on Colombia, thinking like ULS support said us (you have an electrical problem) but the machine failed again. We repair the board, start the machine, and the history begin. We check all on the engraver (input voltage, output voltage, cables, motors, we heve used regulator, on line UPS, etc, etc) but the machine fail again and again, we rapair the board again and again... One and the half week ago, people from Universal laser came to Colombia, change all the motors, the cpu, the driver board, the flexible cable and two little board near to the X motor and did a general maintenance. Cut just a few pieces and said "problem solved". It was on Yesterday nigth, but Monday, at the begining of journay, the machine just cut a few pieces and the same problem, worst, becauser before la machine can work hours or days, now just a few minutes. What the machine exactly do? The machine starts normally but when it cutting, the X motor stop to moved, the laser turn off, no messages on the display and the y motor continue moving, like nothing bad happening. At this moment, if we check, there is a short between Vcc and any output of one IC l298N. always the same IC (There is no short on the cables, at least we don't see it yet). We are crazy with this machine, we don't know what to do at the moment. Some one has any idea what is happeing here?. Please, forgive my english, i know it is no so good

Thanks for any help

Juan David

[Joe Pelonio]

Juan,

Are you still on warranty? It sounds like they made a good effort to help by going to your location, but now that it's broken again, you might try to talk to someone higher up in the company and try to get them to take it back and send you a new machine. You said you have a regulator, and UPS, if that tests OK then they can't blame your voltage, so it must be a faulty machine. If they can't identify the part that causes it to fail, they should replace the whole thing.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Juan,

My best guess is that there is a short in the wire harness Where i don't know. You sound like you are fairly technical person I would recommend that you have the factory send a replacement harness. It is not a fun task to change it but it can be done in the field.

Something is shorting out and blowing the drivers. if you can put a meter onto the power supply and run the system try to watch it while it is running and see if there are any changes once it fails.

That may give us some more clues but from everything i have read it sounds like a short, loose contact something to do with the wiring harness.

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Joe and Mr Mike. Thanks for your kind answers. And like Mr Mike said. i think the only thing that we have to see is the harness, where ? i don't know but this is the best we can do at the moment, because we don't have more ideas. We need to fix this machine because Universal laser is averse to take the machine back, and we spent a lot of money (more of US 500000) in this engraver. If we can fix it, you are sure i will tell you. Thanks again...but if you know something new..please let me know that...

[Mike Mackenzie]

Juan,

We have worked with this equipment for many years if you need assistance with anything please post here or give us a call or e-mail and we will do what we can to help you correct the problem.

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Mike, maybe can you help us. We can't fix the problem of this machine, the last we did it was to make a cable from the "driver board" to the X motor, no conection, just a direct cable to the motor. The engraver just work for one and the half hour and again the X motor died. There are similar machines in our city but no the same (just 60 watts one head). There is a x2-660 with one head which from the beggining has had the problem with the plane cable (overheat on it) They have had to change the motor and the plane cable, and the little boards several times. There is no solution at the moment to this problem, but never, at least until now, the driver board fail. Maybe there is a note about our problem, some firmware update, driver update or something like that ? thanks for any help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mike Mackenzie]

Juan,

I need to start with firmware and driver versions. We have plenty of these systems set-up this way without any problems. In case you don't know where these version numbers are.

For the firmware turn on the system wait for the ready press escape move the cursor down to preferences press select move the cursor down to about and press select give me that number that is listed there.

For driver version go into the properties of the driver click on the Engraving Field tab click on the version tab give me that number.

I will look into this once I get these numbers.

Are you using a dual head? If so try removing the second head and see if this problem still exists.

If you can give me the numbers off of the top of the X motor.

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Mike, we really appreciate your help. i hope the information below can be enough:

Model engraver: X2-660 Superspeed dual head 220V single phase.

Information about frimware: Universal Laser System,Copiright ULS 2002,Superspeed 660 DH, Version 21-23-38.SF

The driver version: 1.07 M (i am not sure about this number because i did't take the number directly, in a few hours i'll go to the factory to be sure).

The number on the X motor: 100-0015-0 manufacturing date: 11/17/04

I want to add this: Operation system: XP professional Version 2002,Service pack 1. Procesor Pentium IV 2.86 Ghz, 496 M of memory.

How i said, the system has two head. We did the test to removed the second head, including the air pipe to rule out any obstruction (we simulated the cut with the cover open) and we had the same problem.

Thank again for your kind help

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Mike, i forgot that the laser power is 120 Watts. I think this is important

[Mike Mackenzie]

Juan,

I am assuming that you are vector cutting correct?

What are your settings (Power, Speed)?

The 120 watts should not make a difference unless one of the tubes is pulling down the power from the power supply. You can try to unplug one tube and run it with the door opened and see what this does.

I am very curious on the settings.

The firmware version and driver versions are the current release. So there must be something else.

[Lee DeRaud]

I didn't see anywhere in that narrative where the power supply for the electronics was replaced.

Mike, could it be the power supply going unregulated under load? Had that happen once with a VME rack and it was an absolute pig to diagnose. (And no, that's not the word I wanted to use. :p)

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Mike

First we are on vector cutting all the time.

Second, the settings that the operator use more frecuentely are: Velocity between 2 and 8, laser power almost always 100% (the material we use is similar to the material of a shirt's botton) and 500 PP. He use corel draw to work.

Like i said we simuleted the cut with the cover open, so the laser is power down but the machine "draw" the work. When we do that, the machine works for maybe minutes or hours and then the x motor stop to work. No move. When the machine is work is very nice , because the final work is very beautiful. There is no difference when the laser is working on or off. Mr Lee says that maybe we have to change the power supply, but let me say this. We checked with osciloscope and multimeter (we used the both at the same time) and we did'nt see something wrong with it and when we simuleted the cut with the cover open the only load of the power supply are the X and Y motors and the machine equal failed. The power supply (if my mind is correct) isn't a one power supply. They are really three power supplies working on parallel, 48 volts, 10 amperes each one. We thought about that but how the problem is only the X motor, we rule out this option, but maybe, we are wrong. I don't know what Mr Mike think.

Thanks again for yours answers

[Dave Jones]

Maybe there is something physical on the x axis that is causing friction and making the motor work harder than it should, so it overheats. Or maybe there is a problem with the driver board for that motor that is outputing spikes to the motor.

Do you have a line conditioner on your AC power line so there are no large power surges coming in from other machines in the building or nearby buildings?

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Dave, we the the followings items on the Ac power line:

First: Line conditoner. Power: 5000 KVA, Single fase output, Phase-neutral:220v
Neutral-ground: 0 volts

Second: A cut of surges or high speaks. I don't know if i have used the correct english word (sorry for that), between phase and neutral, phase and ground and ground and neutral.

third: UPS Online, sine wave output.

The engraver is conected to the UPS. Like you see, we have enought protection between the engraver and the AC line. We thought that.


Besides, the driver board has been changed 3 times and repairded too many times!!!!! We checked and there is no friction on the X axis.

Like you see Mr Dave, it's a very very strange problem.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Juan,

It is obvious that something is increasing the current ( most likely resistance) and causing the motor driver to overheat and blow.

What I would do is to:

Change out the CPU
Change out the Upper Flex Board
Change out the Lower Flex Board and the Flex Cable.

I know this is not what you want to hear but I believe that it has something to do with the problem.

I don't know when you changed these parts the first time but it may have been attributed to another problem and these parts could have been damaged because of it. (power problems)

The cable and boards are now being made with all Gold contacts to eliminate any resistance problems.

Usually if the power supply were the problem and spiking it would blow the fuse on the CPU!

Not just keep blowing the driver chip.

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Mike.

We have changed this item three time, even the ULS technician changed all this parts when he came to Colombia, including all the motors. But the contacs are no gold contacs (i am talking about of the flex cable, the upper board (on the X motor) and the conection board (where the arnes and the flex cable conect together). The CPU board has been change too about three times, all the packege (cpu and driver board).

Today we have made some calculations about currents and voltages on the X motor and the ic L288N and we have made "some things" on the machine with a good behavior of her. No fault all the day. We have to wait some days more to be sure if these "things" are the solutions about that. We are very optimistic about that. I hope it will be the solution, i really hope that.

Sure i'll tell you about our results. Thanks for all.

[Juan Blandon]

At the moment, the engraver is working fine, so the stuffs that we did are working good. I´ll be waiting more days to see the real results of this situation.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Juan,

I wiould be very curious on what you did to solve the issue.

[Bernhard Rameder]

Hi,

Mike told you the way where i had started. What´s going on, with diconnected tubes? do you have the same issue as with both tubes connected and the top door closed?

Please let us know, because this will show us if one of the tubes causes the problem.

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Bernhard

If you read my mails of few days ago, we did some test with the cover open. When the cover is open, the laser is off (no laser light from any tube), making this test, the machine fail too. So we think there is no relation between the fail of the X axis and the work of the laser. Besides (at least in our machine) if you open the back cover, lasers are power down. Making this probe the same problem. We have though something about the machine, but the moment we don´t want to talk about that.

At the moment the engraver is working very fine, excelent with a beautiful job but we want to wait more days to be sure about the change we made but we are very optimits because is the first time the machine is working without problem for more a week. Sure i´ll talk you about that.

[Juan Blandon]

Mr Mike, the last mail was for you too. Thanks

[Bernhard Rameder]

Hello,
if the cover is open you should have jsut the red dot pointer and no laser beam. the reason for it are the interlocks. So as soon as you open the top door, front door or the back door (where the tubes are located) the laser beam turns off and changes into the red diode beam.
That´s the way how it is, otherwise you will be not allowed to work with this machine.

I hope it is working for a longer time now.

The reason for test with disconnected tubes was to check if maybe on of the tubes are corrupting the motion system.

have a nice weekend,
Bernhard

[Juan Blandon]

Hi, I want to say that how we say in my country "we hit it on the head" to our problem. At the moment the engraver is working very fine. We have cut a thousands of pieces without any problem. The engraver has been working ten, twelve hours/day not stopped very fine .

I would like to give my thanks to all people who help us, especially to Mr Mike.