LaserCutZ team has exceptional experience building custom machines. If your laser equipment needs maintenance, fixes or modifications we can help. Most of laser machines in NYC area are serviced by LaserCutZ. We do on location laser machine maintenance and repairs.  We are capable of repairing or rebuilding optical, mechanical and electronic components of laser machines.

At this moment there are 3 type of laser machines that used in various industries, those are:

• CO2 Tube Based Lasers
• YAG gem rod lasers with xenon lamps
• Fiber lasers with diode source

CO2 Laser Machine Maintenance and Repairs

CO2 lasers are powered by one or multiple lamps (tubes) those are considered consumables and need to be replaced time to time. 40w lamp life is shortest and in reality gives machine 50-200 hours at 100% power. 100W CO2 laser tube can leave about 2500 hours under 100% load. 400W CO2 tube usually yields 10,000 hours. Bigger machines such 2.5kW consist of multiple tubes, ex 5 tubes of 500W each they can live for 10k hours or so. If tube operates at lower power it will survive longer also proper cooling affects tube lifecycle.  Beside tube, next most commonly serviced part in Co2 laser cutting machine is focus lens, it gets dirty or burns out. Focus lenses need to be cleaned at least once a month. Most machines we seen have issues with focus lenses. In addition if material gets on fire it damages focus lens and air connector so both need to be replaces. In case of fires, those are usually caused by dirty cutting blades or honeycombs, direct creates a spark and cutting gasses get on fire. Next mirrors need to be cleaned and replaced regularly.  For cooling industrial chillers that come with machines usually leave for about 4 years and then start to fail. Additionally CO2 power supplies seams to fail in around 6 years of operations. Very often 10 year machine gest fully rebuild if it’s still in service.  Smaller machines usually need few hours and few visits to get them fixed, while bigger machines may need few month to diagnose and repair them. In general CO2 lasers require good amount of maintenance and attention to them in order to be operable and to ensure that machine can live long.

 

YAG Laser Repairs
In YAG system laser beam is generated by xenon lamp that is energized by high voltage. Light form lamp is captured by gem (ruby) rod and fired to mirror then reflected beam comes back to rod to pump the laser frequency (double the frequency) to achieve 1064 nm wavelength. YAG lasers are faintly complex and harder to tune comparing to CO2 laser. Most common problem of yag laser is weak lamp. Those need to be replaced every 50 hours on smaller power lasers. Bigger lasers can have lamp operable for 200 hours. As result amount of maintenance for YAG lasers is very high although replacing lamp is not too hard. Aside from lamp rod has about 1000 hours life time and need to be replaced too. Rod is probably most expansive consumable in YAG lasers.    Newer models of YAG lasers introduced pumped diode option. With pumped diode machine uses UV LED to generate laser beam and then it’s being pumped through ruby disk. Those machines are usually cheaper and require less maintenance but power output is significantly smaller. YAG lasers are currently very popular option as their prices are dropping. We see very big spike of popularity of YAG lasers in medical fields such as dental lasers, hair removal lasers, skin dermatology lasers, eye surgery lasers. Many doctors purchased machines from China in recent years and they all need repairs now.  Aside from medical YAG lasers are used as welders in jewelry business. There some metal cutting YAG lasers, although high power YAGs never gained popularity due to high maintenance and repair cost so bigger manufacturing business proffer either CO2 or Fiber lasers.

Fiber Lasers Repair

Fiber laser machines are once that have minimum or next to none maintenance requirements. Fiber laser operates form UV LED diode, similar to once used in NdYAG however to pump wave length special fiber optics spool is used. In similar way laser source outputs UV light to both sides of fiber line and then resulted doped wave goes to exit fiber. Fiber optics is not a consumable so no rod replacement is needed, in same way LED source has ratings of 100k hours which means it would never need to be replaced. So far fiber laser machines we see don’t need any repairs. Some minimum maintenance can be needed on power supplies and fans but that’s about it.  At current moment fiber lasers are popular as metal cutting and engraving machines, medical lasers. With possible price drops they may get more adaptation in welding industry