I’m cutting 12mm Baltic birch. Cut was great most of the way and then became wide and shallow as if out of focus but the cone to wood distance is the same as the area that cut cleanly. The picture show all one cut. I removed the cut pieces after I stopped it for the problem. Chiller is 19.8c and the air is on. Any idea? Are there instructions for cleaning the lens ?
Is the air assist cone hot after running?
By that I mean after running at full power for 30 sec (no biggie if it is doing short hops from cut to cut) and you feel the cone like 10 sec after, is it hot?
Yes the cone was uncomfortably hot.
Are there instructions for cleaning the lens somewhere?
My cut had run probably 10 minutes. Should I do a thirty second cut now and check?
Based on photos it’s got lens damage, red-tagged for today.
I can investigate and fix it pretty quick after work. Like 6pm.
I’d like to know what the prior user(s) were up to. The lens doesn’t just up and break like that (well, it is broken, but I don’t know why)
Yeah a pic Felipe sent me looks like total lens destruction. No biggie it’s just a replaceable lens, but I’d like to know how that happened.
Tarkin’s massive wattage is well past the ratings of the lenses, but that isn’t really as much of a prob as I feared. As long as the lens is clean and air assist is on, it’s good. When it’s bad it goes bad real quick. But typically we’re talking about lens replacement regardless
@clayD to answer your question on lens cleaning, that is a maintenance item that can be finicky and result in damage to the lens when not done to spec so only members that @dannym has personally trained are cleared to do that. I didn’t see an answer to your question on that so wanted to be sure to mention it. Thank you for trying to help with it and providing details here for Danny to troubleshoot!
Wow things went bad in there. The lens is penetrated and there’s dust from decomposed lens all over including the #3 mirror. The mirror’s molybdenum though and that is really damage tolerant
Not sure why but #2 mirror was a little off.
All fixed
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Not sure what happened, but this happened to me today now. Laser started acting up in the same way that it was yesterday. There must be something else wrong that is causing the laser to be out of focus?
Wow. The replacement lens vaporized, and for no good reason I can see. The beam is centered and the lens looks like it was clean.
Tarkin’s power is actually beyond the ratings of these lenses, but the other mfg was taking it. These aren’t. The damage is insane!
We need more lenses asap, but from the other mfg
Danny, I’ve ordered everything you’ve asked me to order. If there’s something else required, I need you to be more specific.
Does Tarkin need to be red tagged?
I put in another lens when I looked at it last night, it’s good now
@dannym to reinforce @Jon’s statement, please send info on other lenses you want ordered to have on hand if you are not satisfied with what is available in the cabinet. I know this has happened twice this week, so just want to be sure we are prepared with the desired supplies if it continues occurring.
Right. One thing I pushed for on the format of our Maintenance docs would include the Supplies Needed for a task, and that it would include a replenishment level and suggested replenishment quantity. Replacement quantity factors in not just frequency of replacement but how quick it is to replace and any hidden cost of keeping spares- e.g. we wouldn’t keep a lot of multiples of the 6x filters used on the downdraft table if the bulk of filters is going to take up too much storage space.
In this case we only ordered a few lenses because it’s a new mfg and we needed to know if they were as good as they say. The first failure showed the beam notably off-center and since the failure mode was SO bizarre I suspected a machine misalignment was somehow responsible. But the replacement lens from the same mfg just lasted just one day and disintegrated with the beam dead center and apparently a clean lens. This is hard to explain and suggests this mfg’s lens is not up to Tarkin’s uniquely high power density for whatever reason, so it’s good we bought a limited quantity.
I think we’re settled on the prior type of lens, so we should keep like 6 of them on hand now.