ULS Powersupply or Motherboard Failure?

[Robert . Payne]

Hey All,

Our laser stopped firing last Friday it powers up fine, and it attempts to run a job but absolutely no laser firing at all. It was working the day before without any sign of being faulty so it's a bit odd.

We took our tube to the local rep and it works fine in his machine so we eliminated the possibility of a tube failure. He figured it was firmware related so I took the tube back home and updated everything and even setup second PC from scratch just to ensure and still nothing firing.

The rep has a new motherboard on the way and said if I resolved it before it got here I could just mail it back and save the $1,000 or so it costs. The only thing is I'm not 100% convinced it's the motherboard, most electronics tend to fail either 100% or not at all and I took the motherboard out and there is *zero* evidence of any sort of faults, granted capacitors are hard to tell.

I thought perhaps part of the power supply is damaged, as if it's enough power to turn it on and drive most of the machine but not enough to get the tube powered up to fire properly?

Has anyone else experienced something like this?

[Bill George]

If you leave a door open, in the past did the laser not fire or what? Thinking safety switch, But are you also sure you have not changed the color from RGB or CMYK in your project sent to the machine?

[Robert . Payne]

If you leave a door open, in the past did the laser not fire or what? Thinking safety switch, But are you also sure you have not changed the color from RGB or CMYK in your project sent to the machine?

Hey Bill we're fairly certain it has nothing to do with software at this point. The interlocks report as closed and the red pointer (which is still there!) turns off and it runs motion along the cut paths just no laser power at all. Also using same job that had worked the day before.

I'm 99% confident it's either the motherboard or the powersupply, I'm just trying to avoid paying to replace the motherboard just to find out it's actually the powersupply!

[Scott Marquez]

My untrained mind says "power supply", is there a trigger signal of sorts that goes from the motherboard to the power supply that you can check?
Scott

[Robert . Payne]

My untrained mind says "power supply", is there a trigger signal of sorts that goes from the motherboard to the power supply that you can check?
Scott

I have no idea, I don't think so. As far as I can tell from what I can take apart easily it looks like tube's main power supply comes directly from the PSU and isn't routed through the motherboard.

I agree it feels more like a PSU issue, because motherboards normally fail all together rather than partially.

[Glen Monaghan]

Try powering down the ULS, shutting down the PC, removing the USB cable from PC to the ULS, restarting the PC, then reconnecting the USB cable to rediscover the ULS, and see if the ULS fires again. Won't help to just cycle power; you have to force the PC to rediscover the ULS. This appears to be a random, infrequent problem with the ULS machines.

[eduard rodriguez]

My laserpro do the same few months ago. In my case, it was the rj45 cable from the motherboard to the lasertube... bad conection. Cleaned up the cable conectins and worked again

[Kev Williams]

Any chance your ULS guy could get you some troubleshooting diagrams? When my GCC started acting up, which included 'going thru the motions' but no laser firing, followed by not doing much of anything, I searched the 'net and found Jorlink had complete PDF diagrams online for this machine-- for the various power supplies complete with the output voltages from every plug, and for the motherboard complete with a diagram of what every single plug and wire is for. With this info and a basic volt/ohm meter I was able to determine that all voltages were spot on, so everything was doing what it was supposed to be doing--umm, so what gives??

--after scratching my head (and per some suggestions within the same PDF's) I pulled every connector and plug that I could, gave everything a shot of electronics spray cleaner, and once everything was back together, it ran flawlessly, and has done ever since... Cost me nothing but a buck's worth of dry cleaning fluid in a spray can

--the only way 'blind' troubleshooting works is if you have an identical twin to the machine nearby that you can swap parts and back and forth- like you did the the tube. Would your rep be willing to swap other parts for troubleshooting purposes? or is only the tube swappable? (not identical machines)...

diagrams with test procedures are worth their weight in gold and then some, if you can find them

In the meantime, do like me and ED above did, just start pulling and cleaning cables and connections, you may get lucky...

[Glen Monaghan]

In the meantime, do like me and ED above did, just start pulling and cleaning cables and connections, you may get lucky...

Better, start by reinitializing the link as I described above... only one cable involved, and you don't even have to try to clean the contacts; just get the PC to rediscover the ULS and reinitialize the software interface. Good chance that will do the trick, based on his description of symptoms.

[Robert . Payne]

Better, start by reinitializing the link as I described above... only one cable involved, and you don't even have to try to clean the contacts; just get the PC to rediscover the ULS and reinitialize the software interface. Good chance that will do the trick, based on his description of symptoms.

Hey Glen, we've done that already -- the rep even had us reset the EPROM and we've also used a completely new PC (I formatted and re-installed windows on it) just to rule out software issues.

Any chance your ULS guy could get you some troubleshooting diagrams? When my GCC started acting up, which included 'going thru the motions' but no laser firing, followed by not doing much of anything, I searched the 'net and found Jorlink had complete PDF diagrams online for this machine-- for the various power supplies complete with the output voltages from every plug, and for the motherboard complete with a diagram of what every single plug and wire is for. With this info and a basic volt/ohm meter I was able to determine that all voltages were spot on, so everything was doing what it was supposed to be doing--umm, so what gives??

--after scratching my head (and per some suggestions within the same PDF's) I pulled every connector and plug that I could, gave everything a shot of electronics spray cleaner, and once everything was back together, it ran flawlessly, and has done ever since... Cost me nothing but a buck's worth of dry cleaning fluid in a spray can

--the only way 'blind' troubleshooting works is if you have an identical twin to the machine nearby that you can swap parts and back and forth- like you did the the tube. Would your rep be willing to swap other parts for troubleshooting purposes? or is only the tube swappable? (not identical machines)...

diagrams with test procedures are worth their weight in gold and then some, if you can find them

In the meantime, do like me and ED above did, just start pulling and cleaning cables and connections, you may get lucky...

Kev yea this is what it might come down to, I don't trust myself a ton with a multimeter so I've taken the PSU unit to a certified electrician to get tested -- the rep told me the output voltage it should have off the prongs. If that test comes back as nothing is wrong I'm going to swap the motherboard and just hope that's all it is otherwise it may be a wild goose hunt to what part of the electrical system is broken.

[Robert . Payne]

So we managed to get this fixed up!

Turns out it was indeed a faulty motherboard, I still find that extremely strange as electronics tend to not just have such a "partial" failure but the new motherboard has the machine humming along just fine.

In the end I didn't need to get the PSU checked but I just wanted to save myself $1,000 and the hassle of the motherboard swap if that was the issue.

[Mike Null]

Glad you're up and running and thanks for reporting back to us.

[eduard rodriguez]

Congrats!Happy too with my refurbished tube Installed 2 days ago. None stop working!

[Scott Marquez]

I'm glad to hear you got it going. Is the motherboard repairable? I have had to send off circuit boards for welding equipment, when they were no longer available, I wonder if there is such a place for that board?
Scott

[Robert . Payne]

I'm glad to hear you got it going. Is the motherboard repairable? I have had to send off circuit boards for welding equipment, when they were no longer available, I wonder if there is such a place for that board?
Scott

I have no idea, there's no obvious sign of damage on the board, we've already paid for the new motherboard now so hopefully we don't have to deal with this again for many years to come…