Laser under heavy use. questions for you

[Harry Radaza]

Hi all! I have a Universal Versalaser VL300 50 watt unit. We do A LOT of high volume industrial type jobs such as cutting and engraving different designs onto wood (in the thousands). I have found that the lens gets a bit dirty after a full load ( about an hour's worth of run time). So to make sure we clean it. This means, waiting 10 minutes to cool down the lens, cleaning it (5 minutes) and another 10 minutes before we fire it up again. This gives me a total down time of 25 minutes in between jobs.

Just wondering if anyone is going through the same thing as I am?
questions:

1) Do you clean your lens as often as 4 to 5 times in one 8 hour shift like I do?

2) how many minutes do you need to cool down then lens before cleaning and how many minutes before using it again?

3) Does having a 2nd set of lenses sound feasible, so after 1 hour's worth pull out dirty lens, stick clean lens and run machine again while dirty lens is cleaned. does this sound good?

4) Does having the machine run a full 8 hour shift ruin it? Or is it fine?

5) Can the machine be run 24 hours?

thanx for your answers. Just making sure I get the longest life span out of my ULS versa.

[Lee DeRaud]

The manual only calls for 3-5 minute cooldown before cleaning the optics. The cleaner is alcohol-based and dries very quickly: I don't see any reason to wait any significant amount of time after cleaning before using it, nor does the manual call for it. By the time you reinstall the lens and set up for the next batch, you should be good to go.

But the fact that you have to clean it every hour sounds like you need a lot more airflow from your extraction blower...air assist would probably help too. I'm doing mostly wood on a VL200 and cleaning the lens every 6-8 hours of run-time: most of the time there is little visible residue and no reduction in cut quality at that point.

I don't know what the recommended duty cycle of the VL300 is, but with that kind of usage, the cost of a second lens is trivial (your question #3). As far as the rest of the machine is concerned, my understanding is that the motion mechanism will outlast the laser tube and is relatively cheap to refurbish anyway.

[Joe Pelonio]

[quote=Lee DeRaud]
But the fact that you have to clean it every hour sounds like you need a lot more airflow from your extraction blower...air assist would probably help too. I'm doing mostly wood on a VL200 and cleaning the lens every 6-8 hours of run-time: most of the time there is little visible residue and no reduction in cut quality at that point.
[quote]
Agreed, my blower is fine but when I run a big job like that I switch to a compressor for air assist and increase from the usual 20 to 30 lbs. Have not done that kind of project with wood, but did 1/4" acrylic for close to 40 hours, I cleaned daily with no problems. Wood is going to be worse though, and best to be safe and clean more often than burn a mirror or lense.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Harry,

First off it sounds like your exhaust may not be good enough. The better the exhaust means less residual smoke in the cabinet. The smoke should be pulling straight back with good exhaust.

Second you may want to add the air assist option that will blow a steady stream of compressed air around all of the optics and really help with cleaning.

Third it is nice to have a back-up Len's kit but not entirely necessary. The only reason I would have one is in case of emergency and something happened to the Len's.

Fourth you will not ruin the system by running it that amount of time.

And last they can and do run 24 hours a day 7 day's a week. You do need to factor in maintenance time with any system being used like that.