Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
I noticed this recently on both VL300 and uls3.5 both 50 watts.

When engraving on a shiny gold coated plastic mylar, a faint line appears on the left and right side of the about 3.3cm from the edge of engraving. This is the point at which the head changes direction on the x axis(left to right and right to left). It appears that the laser is firing at that point, but why gold only and why at times and why two machines and why at times only one side?

Any solutions for this?
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Re: Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
This is a wild guess, but I wonder if the shiny surface is reflecting part of the beam back onto the mirror ?

Try painting or sticking something over the gold sheet, to see if it helps the problem.
Re: Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
Tired that but could see some faint marking on the masking tape. Eliminated the reflection problem as it should be continious and not at the point at which the laser head stops to change direction.

Also tried lifting up the door while engraving is in process. This way the laser head reaches to either left or right with th ered led light pointing. And cearly the faint lines appear at theend.

We feel it is the firing at that point of time. Could there be like residual firing kind of thing as some energy is create while the laser head is in motion?

What surprised me the most is both the machines does the same yet they are different.
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CNC Guru
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Re: Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
See attachment
Attachments:
Gold reflecting and over run marking.doc
(55 KiB) Downloaded 870 times
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Re: Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
as a pdf:
Attachments:
Gold%20reflecting%20and%20over%20run%20marking.pdf
(70.6 KiB) Downloaded 919 times
CNC Guru
CNC Guru
Re: Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
Did ULS supply this info?

Wonder if the tickle switches would make a difference!
Re: Laser firing when head turns on x-axis
What causes the "leak" could the laser be repaired for that. Replacing new laser is not viable. However, to over come this problem what i am doing is creating vertical hairline light black line on both the edges just outside of the material to be engraved.

This makes the head move to the extreme ends such that the leak occurs outside the material to be engraved. However, it takes much much longer to engrave.

What is the tickle switch and how can it help?
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