Hello CNC-Zone...
Our shop has had a G Weike 1290 laser cutter for about a year and a half, running a 100W RECI tube, a Leetro MPC6515C controller, and a CW4000 water chiller. We generally use Illustrator/Rhino/CAD and convert in Lasercut 5.3... lots of work thrown at the machine so far, lots of great results.
Earlier this week I was engraving a very straightforward 90cm x 30cm (3'x1') sign... simple vector file, simulates fine, certainly seems like no issues with the file whatsoever. Run time on the file is ~20 minutes, settings are 600% Speed / 70% Engrave power.
I have tried to engrave this file many times and each time it will function perfectly up until the point when it briefly freezes, lasers a dot onto the surface, and proceeds to send the laser head to the left along the x-axis (well beyond the boundary of the file) until it physically crashes into the side (or at least it would if not for cat-like reactions and an E-Stop). Now, the curious part is that although the error manifests itself in the same way each time, it doesn't occur at any consistent moment. It generally happens between 6-12 minutes into the 20 minute engrave time. With more testing I have determined that it does not ALWAYS fail, but it will fail in this way at least 80% of the time... smaller files with shorter run times will still cut and engrave without problems.
The machine has been lubricated and maintained quite well; aside from this issue it seems to be functioning perfectly.
It seems to me like a hardware problem; my best guess is that the controller is to blame, but I'm really not certain.
Any advice would be hugely appreciated!
Thanks very much!