Hello,

[Stella Irish]

HELLO everyone,
I purchased a used 100w chineese laser with a cw500 chiller a few years ago.
I have only done a few different projects on it so far, mainly face masks but have not used it in over a year. I just moved it out of the corner of my shop and gave it a good cleanup but still not as clean as I would like. I am planning to clean and regrease the linear rails and ball screws for the z axis.

I did relevel the z axis table because one or both of the stepper motors were stalling when raising or lowering causing the table to rack. Leveling has helped but I have not moved it alot since then. It took alot of time to level, and I don't want it to go out of position.

I will test it more later. I wanted to be able to fire up the laser and after cleaning mirrors and optic and flushing out the rv antifreeze that was in the chiller and co2 tube, I did a test engraving on glass and it seems to be working ok.

I currently work with fiber lasers that are used for welding and hope to learn more about co2 lasers (cutting and engraving) and share what I can with all of you on this forum .

[Pete Cyr]

Welcome Stella - Be sure to back up your vendor setting - they are easily lost and difficult to recover.

pete

[Gene Uselman]

I did relevel the z axis table because one or both of the stepper motors were stalling when raising or lowering causing the table to rack. Leveling has helped but I have not moved it alot since then. It took alot of time to level, and I don't want it to go out of position.

I have found that to be a constant problem on larger machines [they use two steppers, one on each side of the bed] I now wire one of the motors with a switch to turn off the power- you can now run one side and level it to the other. Unless the motors are too small [ ask me how I know ] they will stay together for a while at least and if you check the left to right level before starting a large job, it is quick to relevel.

As I think more about this, I think both motors were driven by one driver and perhaps I found a matching driver so that I could split them- the motors were too small as well and this bed [1800x1300] is quite heavy as it is closed on the bottom and funnels into a waste drawer- all welded steel of course[/i][/b]

Larger bed lasers have very unique issues and I have suffered a lot of them- let me know if I can help. Gene