Need help reinstalling my Iradion tube on a Trotec machine - No power

[Ricardo Krisa]

Hi folks,


I was hoping you can give me some help on an issue with my Trotec Rayjet 300 machine, so I`ll try to explain it thoroughly.


The machine is 6 years old and runs on an Iradion 156F 60W RF ceramic tube. A few weeks ago I started to get some issues with it`s power working with acrylic.


I had to bump up thw power and lower speed to continue cutting the acrylic sheets until it was struggling so much I decided to give it a goog clean up, change to new lens and check up the mirror alighnments, wicht I twitched a little bit, I was getting a small difference on the 4 corners and managed to adjust it a little.


Problem is right after that the power was completely gone, using the parameter to cut 3mm acrylic it actually only marked the protective film on the acrylic sheet.


At that point I assumed the tube needed to be recharged and sent it over to repair. Yesterday I got it back, it had been thoroughly tested and supporting an 60-63w on the tests, and before recharging it has been confirmed it really was running out of power.


I plugged everything back in and reinstalled the laser tube exactly as it was when I removed it, and turned the machine on to try and align it, I then put a masking tape over the first mirror entry and proceeded to pulse the laser bean to see what I was working with. It did not mark the tape.


I gave it a few more tests with no look and decided to run a small square to cut from a file, and exactly the same thing before I sent the tube to repair happened, it was able to only mark the protective film.


I spent a lot of time searching for an answer here and all I could come up to a possible reason is maybe a problem with the power suplly, witch I have no knowledge on how it works or how it would affect everything.


So I would like some help to shed some light on this problem and help me solve this, as the tech support I have available here can only come to take a look at things in 2 weeks, but every bit of time I spend without the machine is hurting our business right now.


Please help me figure this out and sorry for the long text!

[vince mastrosimone]

I’m not an expert but I think there’s only a few things you need to check. If you’re sure the tube is in good shape I would look at the power supply to make sure it is producing the required power output. And I would clean and check the mirrors alignment. But you know that.

[Ricardo Krisa]

Hi Vince, yes this are the steps I was thinking I`m supposed to check, but your confirmation is so very useful, I appreciate very much you taking the time to reply to this.

[david levine]

why arnt you reaching out to trotec tech support?

[Chase Williams]

Depending on the wattage of your machine depends on how many power supply’s you would have, you need a multimeter and I believe the voltage settings are in the speedy 300 service manual, or call tech support and they should be able to tell you. If you have 3 power supplies, I believe one power supply is 2v higher then the rest but don’t quote me.

I was told by photovac recently that ceramic tubes were iffy at best for a recharge. They claimed they do all the exchanges or recharges for Trotec. When I spoke with them they claimed they don’t warranty ceramic tubes when they get recharged and they were quite reasonable on pricing compared to other tubes because of the no warranty. They mentioned a 50/50 shot at best of them leaking again quickly and highly recommended an exchange. Photovac said an exchange would have to go through Trotec; this added some trust for me as they wouldn’t make money off of me for an exchange, since it would be directly with Trotec. Evergreen didn’t bring up anything about issues refilling ceramics when I called them and were quite a bit higher priced but I assume with warranty, so it’s hard to know what to believe.

Also have you double checked the signal cable and connection? Might be worth looking at the motherboard and making sure there are no loose/damaged cables.