[richmt11]

Hello All,

Apologies for jumping straight here with a problem thread. I've been reading for some time but never required to post until now.

I have attached a photo of my tube with the lights in the room off so you can see better (though it's not a good pic!).

At the back connector for the tube you can see a pink/purple glow where it appears there is an arc from the cable.

Basically the machine ran fine with no problems at all on last use. I fired it up yesterday and it wouldn't cut through. The beam looked focuses on the material just not going all the way through. So I whacked up the power to see and heard a crackling arcing sound.

I then took off my extension box (a box that fixes on as I upgraded tube and it sticks out). And there is some evidence inside that of arcing to the frame, despite the connector being heavily siliconed and a rubber sleeve over it. So I thought it was losing power to the frame.

Tried it without the box and could see this arcing through my silicone so removed that to see.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Rich

[kb0nly]

Bad connection between the wire and the pin on the tube maybe?? Only thing i could think of, and granted i have only been playing with lasers a couple years now and just recently finally got my own, would be to remove the tube and silicone and check the wire and pin for any signs of arcing, clean the pin, strip back some fresh wire, re-wrap it and seal with fresh silicone and tubing. It stinks that all we can do is wrap the wire on the pin, but you can't solder or fasten it any other way for fear of damaging the tube.