I have an 80W Chinese laser with a RECI tube. It doesn't have a ton of hours on it; but it's about nine years old. Today I was making a cut that was a total of about 90 seconds. For the first 2 seconds of the cut, the laser appeared to not have fired... the head moved but no cutting. Then, for about the next one second, it began cutting but not at full power right away; it sort of ramped up for a second. It was as though it had to 'warm up'. From then on, the rest of the cut was fine. When the cut finished, I just re-started the cut for about 3 seconds to re-cut the first part of the cut.
Now, the tube won't fire at all... it appears to be dead. But I swapped in a backup tube I have and it doesn't fire either. So that makes me think it's not the tube but something in the electronics?
Never seen this before in 9 years. It was a cold-ish morning, around 40 degrees... but I've cut in cold weather before.
Anyone ever heard of this kind of behavior?