Need desperate help please!!!

[Nelson Yepez]

I need some desperate help with my laser cutter.. its an 80w co2 and it has been working great until a couple days ago.
its like it has more power in some parts of the cut. I have tried different setting as far as power and speed and it dosent make a difference.
i know the first advice is always check all the mirrors and such and they are all solid also the cooling is working property and keeping temperature.
i have check them all mirrors lens, pulleys, motors ,cables and nothing is loose.

i have more recently checked the mA meter that is built in in my machine by advise of another member and the mA jumps high in the parts of the cut and low during the rest of the cut, the mA meter dosent stay constant through the cut so thats showing where the problem is but i dont know what could be causing it.
. please help me out or direct me to the best way to get help thanks a lot. the machine i have uses lasercut 5.3
what does usually make the Ma jump up and down during a cut??

IMG_3425.jpg
i cut a rectangle in wood and you can see how the power is high in some parts and low in other and this correlates with the mA meter jumping.

Furthermore, i know the mirrors pulleys, lens, motors , cables and more are ok because there is one instance the machine makes a perfect cut. my machine has a "CUT CONTOUR" feature built in. after finishing a cut or engrave job i can press that button directly on the machine and it will cut a box around the job. when i do this it does a perfect cut and the mA meter and power dont jump up and down and you can see that by the perfect line.

IMG_3423.jpg

[Bert Kemp]

looking at the cut it looks like it goes way out of focus, the line is thin in focus then looks very thick like its out of focus. But then the other cut look thick all the way around. I got no clue whats going on here. Is your material wqarped or table not level.

[Kev Williams]

Just reading thru the Lasercut manual-- check the "corner power" settings to make sure they're fairly close to the main power settings; corner power should be around 4 or 5% lower than actual power..

You might have some acceleration speed settings out of whack a bit--

I found info on 'cut length', 'blank length' and 'blank first' that refers to making solid lines into 'broken' lines, which is kinda what you're getting- while the info describes the settings:

Cut Length: length of the line (when the laser is on), when figure with solid line is processed to
the effect of broken line.
Blank Length: gap between the lines (when the laser is off), when figure with solid line is
processed to the effect of broken line.
Blank first: define the first stroke is solid or broken line when figure with solid line is processed
to the effect of broken line ---

---it doesn't explain where or how to change the settings--?

That's all I can think of at the moment-

[Bill George]

Looks like the lens is loose in the holder, did you check that like you were advised to do over on CNCZone? It would give you exactly what you are showing? So when you say you've already checked everything…. have you and how did you check?

[Doug Fisher]

I think Kev is suggesting a good simple place to start. Good laser controllers have settings that tell it how to deal with corners and thus it will vary the power/speed so it doesn't overburn in the corners. With a Ruida controller, it takes into account the max and min power settings plus probably the acceleration factors.

[Bill George]

I have owned and operated lasers for a few years, unless someone has changed those settings they should not need adjustment. The problem is intermittent, not all the time. Checking for loose connections on the PS, tube or mA meter would not be out of the scope of troubleshooting. Checking also for the loose lens or mirrors would not be either as I suggested earlier.

[Kev Williams]

Just my opinions here--

For one, I adjust my corner power settings all the time depending on what I'm cutting or circle-cut speeds, which when run slower that straight cuts use the lower power setting...

If it were a lens moving the engraving would move slightly- if it were a mirror moving, the beam would move a ton, if it showed up at all...

His cut contour function's instructions are defaulted into the controller and would be divorced from the 'cut my work' functions sent by the user; the contour cut is fine, the user cut is not. Least complicated explanation is, the controller is working okay otherwise the contour cut should mess up too... more testing for repeatability of these issues would determine if this is true...

To me the cut lines look like dashed lines, the darker lines are identical to each other, likewise the lighter lines. But if the dashed-line option is in play, why did the light lines engrave at all? ---- unless there's a setting for that, such as for creating a perforated edge on posterboard, which would make sense...

My Triumph has a 'dot' setting in type-of-engraving menu, but I've not once ever explored what it's supposed to do, but I've always assumed it's for making dashed lines or dots out of solid lines...?