30W XT Laser LMC Hardware error

[Matthew LaFrance]

[Issue resolved, edit is below]
Hello everyone,

I have a 30watt fiber laser purchased directly from XT Lasers and shipped from China. Had it running fine for a few years now.

Today suddenly mid engraving it stopped and displayed the following error:
"Can not find a valid lmc device!"

The computer used is the windows laptop included with the laser. The computer is not connected to the internet, and no updates have ever been performed for the EZCAD2 software or the windows install itself.

I attempted a shutdown of laser and PC, and restarted with same issue. I opened EZcad2 install from the USB dongle included and that gave one of the two following errors:
"LMC hardware version error!"
then a separate time opening the software it gave this:
"Fiber Laser: over temperature!"

The over temp is weird as the machine had been down for at least a half hour at this point and was not hot. I have had it run 12 min long program back to back for hours and never had a heat issue.

I opened device manager and confirmed that the BJZ board shows up when USB plugged in, and it doesn't show up when I unplug the wire. Its a USB male to male wire which I do not have a spare to test if somehow the wire went bad but still shows the driver when plugged in.

Any ideas of what caused this and what I can do to get it up and running? I contacted the XT laser support email and WhatsApp but with the time difference I doubt I will get a response today.

Thanks for any info or insight anyone might have!

Edit: after taking apart the machine and cleaning dust build up and checking all connection the problem went away, most likely was a loose connector. Leaving post for reference incase someone else gets same error.

[Kev Williams]

beg, borrow, steal or buy another USB cable and try that.

If you don't have a can of spray electronics cleaner, get one- CRC in red/white cans is good stuff. If you're okay with opening the machine and pulling cables and such, open the machine and start disconnecting plugs- spray both ends of the plugs and re-attach. Start with the plugs going to the control board, then all other plugs. There will be USB cables within the machine, spray those too. Pull the plug(s) off the scanhead and spray those.

IF changing the USB cable AND spraying all the plugs doesn't help, chances are 'fair' that your control card is bad.

In my 47 years in this business, cable connections and bad USB cables have given me more grief than anything else...

[Matthew LaFrance]

Kev,

Thanks for getting back to me. Of course of the dozens of USB cables on hand I did not have a USB Male to Male wire which was needed from machine to laptop. I ordered a new one which arrives today. But luckily problem solved and I will edit my post.

I took apart the box to check the internal connections and run some tests on the power supply, not sure what specifically fixed it but once I did a general cleaning and hooked it up again everything was back to normal. There was a good bit of dust in the machine so maybe that was it, or I reconnected a loose connection somewhere along the way.

Either way I appreciate the insight and suggestions and will have a spare cable and cleaning spray on hand for any future issues. Also started shopping for a second machine.

Have a good one

[Kev Williams]

Glad it's going! thumbup.gif