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I Fried My Laser’s Power Supply

Address Numbers number 4 detail

Last weekend I started a little project cutting some arts and crafts (1920’s) style address numbers for my house, the test numbers came out fine but when I started cutting a slightly larger set my laser just stopped cutting.

I found some obvious electrical burn marks  on what looks like the high-voltage transformer on the laser tube power supply.

high-voltage transformer burn marks

So, until I can replace the part or get a new power supply, I'm out of business with the laser. If you have any comments or ideas about fixing it, feel free to email or post them.

I’m still not sure if  the root cause is a genuinely faulty part, or the power supply isn’t designed for continuous high-power use, or it’s just cheap in general.

I do have a small backlog of projects that I’ll be posting, but I'll have to stop making the parts for the Jansen walker that I get orders for every now and then.

Print | posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 12:39 PM | Filed Under [ Original Posts Laser ]

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# re: I Fried My Laser’s Power Supply

What a disappointment about your power supply.

That is the flyback transformer that fried. It boosts pulses of DC from a 100 volts or so up to 15K or so. Old CRT monitors and TVs had them. I think more modern CRTs had solid state voltage booster circuits. If you can read the frequency and voltage of the input signal, you could probably locate a suitable replacement.

There is a place in New Mexico that probably would sell you a replacement power supply board for several hundred bucks. To make lemonade from this lemon, you might want to consider getting a power supply replacement that uses TTL signals to control the output. This could be driven by MACH3 if you add a stepper controller to the mix. I have already decided that that would be my course of action if my PSU died. These power supplies look like regular ATX PSUs and can be had for $350 on Ebay. I would probably get one sized for an 80 watt tube to allow for future upgrade when the tube quits.

Here's a link to the New Mexico vendor:
www.mbkpinternational.com/...40_laser_engraver.htm

Regards,
Leon
9/3/2009 5:18 AM | Leon Shreves

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