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Laser Service done by CO2 Cincinnati Laser experts

Industrial Laser Shop Safety for Non-Laser Operators and “Tourists”: Videos

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Laser Maintenance Group / Innovative Laser & Design owner Scott Kiser demonstrates "sound shock" and gas venting in his Industrial laser shop safety video series.
Venting Gas: Laser Shop Safety includes preparing for sound shock surprises

If you own and operate a company that uses laser systems, you may not be concerned about industrial laser shop safety for non-laser operators who work at or visit your firm.

You should be! Most folks can’t operate industrial lasers. In fact, most visitors — even your administrative and management employees — may not think about industrial laser system and shop safety. It’s your job to protect them!

In this video series, Laser Maintenance Group / Innovative Laser & Design owner Scott Kiser, aka “Laser Service Guy“, gives safety tips for non-laser operators (and tourists and tour guides) to keep safe around legacy CO2 laser systems. Scott gives practical safety tips as he walks you through his CO2 industrial laser system shop, Innovative Laser & Design.

Laser Shop Safety Video Series:

The full 8+ minute laser safety overview video is divided into smaller segments. The series gives advice to company owners who use industrial laser systems, as well as safety tips for people who might occasionally be around industrial lasers. Each video focuses on a different aspect of laser system and shop safety. View those videos on the Laser Service Guy / Innovative Laser YouTube channel, or click on the links.

Other Laser System Safety Videos

Kiser “Laser Service Guy” also created other laser system safety videos for laser operators and “tourists”.

Laser Maintenance Group Consulting Services

Do you want a shop and laser system safety review? Would you like your work flow to be more cost effective and work/time/effort/resource efficient? Do you and your employees need industrial laser system maintenance, operations or safety training? Do you have other industrial laser system consulting needs? Contact Scott Kiser at LaserSolutions@Comcast.net, or call 423-593-7206.

Laser Maintenance Group, LLC and Innovative Laser & Design are USA Veteran-owned Small Businesses in LaFayette, Georgia, USA.

Industrial Laser Service from Laser Maintenance Group

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At Laser Maintenance Group (LMG), our industrial laser service and maintenance visits fall into three categories: Routine, Preventative, and Corrective. Almost every service call we make has components of each in it. However, there is a preference as to which type of visit we make … for both of us.

Routine laser maintenance:

Laser maintenance visits schedules LMG professionals to work on your laser centers according to a regular time interval. The suggested time is based on manufacturers’ recommendations, coupled with our experience (nearly 30 years) servicing CO2 laser systems. A prescribed set of tasks is completed that allow us to inspect the laser center as we go. In fact, LMG offers routine laser service as well as other packages, when we come out on a scheduled, periodic basis, according to the number of hours you run your laser centers.

Preventative laser service:

When laser service experts at LMG see a performance problem during routine laser maintenance, we do immediate, preventative laser service. These visits also happen our customer calls us and says their laser system seems to not function as well as usual, or differently than normal.

Close contact and cooperation with you, our customers, is vital to keeping your lasers running efficiently. When we discover laser performance issues, we will show and explain the problem to you. With your permission, we will fix the issue immediately, or make arrangements to get it repaired before it damages the laser center or, worse yet, causes it to fail. We prevent catastrophic laser failures.

Corrective laser service:

The aftermath of a near disaster with a laser-cutting machine - Industrial laser service from LMG can prevent these laser problems

When sometime breaks on the laser system and it becomes non-operational, corrective laser service is the work LMG does to return your laser center to full functionality. These situations don’t just mean that your company loses use of a laser until it can be repaired. Unfortunately, waiting until something breaks means it’s probably going to be more expensive and time consuming to fix now, than had you done routine maintenance or preventative service months ago. These problems can also lead to catastrophic laser failure, which can be dangerous to equipment and employees.

An ounce of prevention ….

LMG knows that laser components sometimes simply fail because of age, accidents, use (or misuse). However, 90% of the time, this type of laser service is avoided by doing routine and preventative maintenance.

The laser service professionals at LMG want to avoid doing corrective laser service if at all possible. They would prefer to do routine laser maintenance, on a scheduled basis. Why? Let’s face it: Corrective laser service not only disrupts your manufacturing flow and your schedule. It severely impacts our calendar. We prefer to act rather than react, to step in and eliminate the problem before it bites both of us. Murphy’s law is crystal clear on when the problem will shut your laser down: At the worst possible time. Every time!

Scheduled Laser Maintenance Case Study: A Win/Win

Here’s an example: Our lead laser service technician, “Laser Service Guy” Scott Kiser, is on the road doing routine maintenance on two Cincinnati lasers on the Gulf Coast. He’ll be there Tuesday and Wednesday. Next, he has a scheduled a routine maintenance call for a company in central Georgia. He’ll do that Thursday, which will let him head home to Northwest Georgia on Friday. Based on his schedule, everything looks great.

But then, on Tuesday, as he’s leaving the Gulf Coast, he gets a call from a client in Oklahoma. The manufacturer has a serious problem with their laser. Something went very wrong. The techs had to shut it down, and management desperately needs it to be up and running before the weekend so they can cut the parts they’ve promised to deliver by Monday.

Despite the fact that the emergency laser service call means extra work (and at a higher emergency rate), it’s not something we at LMG want to do. It costs time just to get there from so far away. It inconveniences our other customers. It’s not the best use of our time. And it is not good for the company making that emergency call. (In fact, the only happy company in this scenario is the one on the Gulf Coast that Scott just left. The one that planned ahead and did their routine laser maintenance on time!

Types of Industrial Laser Services from LMG: An Analogy:

Routine industrial laser maintenance is the sticker in your window reminding you to do the oil change, so you will go in every 3,000 miles and have your car serviced.

Preventative industrial laser service is the yellow check engine light, or the mechanic telling you that you need to get something fixed right away … and they can do it for you then.

Corrective industrial laser service is the red check engine light. You have to pull over on the side of the freeway, call a tow truck, and hope you can find someone to fix your car so you can continue.

Remember this truth: As with everything, the more routine an industrial laser service call is, the less it typically costs.

Laser Problems: Avoidable or Unpreventable

There are just two types of problems in this world: Unpreventable and Avoidable. This applies to everything, not just laser service or maintenance. It ranges from physics to medicine, from maintenance (goooood) to former spouses (baaaaaad!). It applies to everything.

No one can defend against unpreventable problems. For example: A lightning strike fries your computer. There is no amount of routine or preventative service that can stop that.

But why fight with both problems if you can eliminate the preventable ones? Your competitor is in the same boat as you, but what an advantage you will have if you are proactive rather than reactive. Scheduling routine maintenance, asking questions when things don’t seem right, fixing potential problems as they are discovered: All these actions help eliminate the preventable side of the equation.

We at LMG are on your side. We will always be part of your industrial laser service solution. We want to be part of your laser service problem prevention.

LMG has both maintenance and industrial laser service packages. Contact us to find out about them, and get on our schedule. We can help you avoid serious industrial laser service problems that could adversely impact your production and your business.

With nearly 3 decades of industrial laser service experience, LMG’s motto is simple:

“The Performance of Your Laser is
a Reflection of the Work We Do!“

Contact Laser Maintenance Group for a Quote

Don’t wait until your high-performance industrial laser center fails. Schedule your laser maintenance visits now with LMG Founder and Chief Technology Consultant Scott Kiser (aka “The Laser Service Guy”) directly at 423-593-7206, or email:  LaserSolutions@Comcast.net.

If you need steel or other metal parts cut for your industrial and manufacturing production lines, visit LMG’s affiliate company: InnovativeLaserCutting.com

White Powder Contamination: Industrial Laser Service Case Study

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Take a little Time to Save a lot of Time (and Money) — Industrial Laser Service Case Study

Most people understand that regular, routine laser maintenance saves money over the long haul. The math supports this, just from an industrial laser service perspective. Servicing industrial lasers – inspecting the optics and mirrors, fine-tuning calibrations, and even doing essential training — lets those CO2 Cincinnati lasers keep humming along.

Laser Maintenance Group (LMG) isn’t just about laser maintenance. We understand the costs in time and money that a struggling laser center can cause in the productivity and quality aspects as well. The indirect cost of sending out poor quality parts or even good parts that are consistently late is hard to quantify. We all agree: Poor quality and late delivery is worse than direct maintenance costs.

What many companies don’t remember is that these complex laser centers eventually require rebuilds. While more costly than routine industrial laser service calls, these rebuilds are essential to keeping these CO2 lasers running at peak efficiency.

Industrial laser service case study scenario — Laser System: Cincinnati CL-7A with a 2KW Rofin-Sinar resonator
High-Level Laser Problem: Instability at High Power
Laser Resonator Internal Optics

Several factors can cause instability at high power. Based on LMG’s experience, if your laser has over 12,000 hours since the last rebuild, chances are it’s a ‘White Powder Contamination’ issue. That is, your resonator optics are being coated with tungsten dust. That disrupts the laser in the beam path as it gets circulated through the gas system. Pictured are two affected internal optics (The silver one is a rear mirror. The yellow one is an output coupler).

Laser Geek-Out: Explanation

CO2 laser white powder contamination is an eventual and normal condition for DC-excited lasers. Laser maintenance won’t prevent this; the material science doesn’t yet exist to avoid this issue.

On all CO2 lasers, the tungsten cathode pins oxidize over time. The problem can be accelerated by vacuum leaks and poor quality laser gas. Both factors contribute to the moisture content inside the system. This allows for the oxidation of the pins. This oxidation then gets distributed throughout the system. Some lands on the internal laser optics and mirrors. As the optics are coated with this dust, laser beam quality and power drop off quickly.

Root Cause Problem:

The tungsten oxide (white powder) contamination has a root cause: The resonator is way past the 12,000 hours where a white powder rebuild should be done. As a result, the tungsten oxide dust coats the optics, deforming the beam shape and lowering the laser’s power.

Short-term routine laser center maintenance solution:
Laser service: White powder contamination can be prevented by laser system rebuilds.
Laser Service Guy Kiser tunes a Rofin-Sinar resonator

Because of this problem, the optics need to be changed at every maintenance interval. Mere cleaning won’t help, since it is usually burned in. The crystal structure of the optic is stressed from absorbing too much laser energy rather than passing it through to the beam delivery. After any of the optics are replaced, we at LMG have to realign them to form a symmetrically-shaped laser beam. (In this photo Laser Service Guy Kiser tunes a Rofin-Sinar resonator.)

Only changing the optics creates what we call a performance spike. The laser runs great for a week or maybe even a month and then starts to slowly fall back to where it was. How fast the laser degrades depends on how severe the contamination is.

Long-term preventative industrial laser service solution:

The Rofin-Sinar resonators on these CO2 Cincinnati lasers should have a white powder rebuild after approximately 12,000 hours of operating time. That may be longer or shorter, as the operating condition of the resonator dictates.

Don’t let anyone tell you your laser is old, and it won’t ever make rated power again. Quite frankly, hearing that upsets me. Why? It means that person either doesn’t know about Cincinnati CO2 lasers and Rofin-Sinar resonators, or doesn’t care. If your 2000 watt resonator cannot make and hold at least 2200 watts, your tech should be embarrassed.

How laser service impacts your manufacturing and your business

At LMG, we’ve seen how the laser’s performance affects the entire plant. If a laser is not performing well, the result can wreak havoc with production schedules. When this happens, the quality of the parts you make is in jeopardy. We also know that corporate accountants are going to complain every time any manufacturing division asks for money, whether it’s to fix the roof or fix a laser.

At LMG we work with our customers to help them prepare for this expense. (In fact, right now we are working with customers to see how the Covid-19 stimulus package funds can be used for this type of industrial laser service and production improvement.) We can usually tell in advance that the performance will degrade to the point something needs to be done in order to keep up with production and quality.

Laser failure bottom line and industrial laser service solution:

What happens if your laser operators have to keep slowing down to cut decent parts? The quality folks are angry. The production leads are frustrated. Your laser operators are stressed out from being gunned down from both sides.

Solution? Let LMG take a look at your laser center and get it back to normal. We know how to make things right, from the various laser parts, to the programming, to the operations. You don’t have to live under this type of pressure, with good laser systems that aren’t functioning at their potential. Learn more about LMG’s Industrial Laser Services, then call us! We will work with you to get your laser back up to where it needs to be, and your team back to normal.

Use the Right Fire Extinguisher Around Laser Systems

To avoid laser system and optics contamination, it’s vital to have the right type of fire extinguishers in your factory. AND you should know which extinguishers to use, when, and why.

Did you know that, although CO2 fire extinquishers cost many times more than typical Class D extinguishers, they are well worth the extra cost? In this video, part of Laser Maintenance Group / Innovative Laser & Design’s Laser Safety series, Scott Kiser explains why he is a firm believer in having several CO2 extinguishers in his shop.

Another way to avoid lens contamination is to use the right kind of fire extinguisher around your laser systems.

CONTACT LMG:
To discuss how LMG can help your business, call 423-593-7206 or email lasersolutions@comcast.net

Laser Service Tip: Preparing For The End (of the Coronavirus Pandemic)

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Laser service — or any type of machine maintenance — can often be overlooked. During the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic, businesses slowed throughout the world. A lot of my laser service and maintenance customers wondered what to do during the slowdown. I wrote a couple of LinkedIn articles on what companies — especially manufacturing firms — can do during any sort of economic or business slowdown.

This article deals specifically with maintenance and service. It can be found here on LinkedIn (and, while you’re on LinkedIn, why don’t you connect with me, if you haven’t already!)

Does the Stimulus Package impact you? It might! It seems that the Federal Government’s Stimulus Package (including $10,000 in Small Business grants, as well as other low interest loans) can be used to bring in contractors, consultants and other W2 workers to perform essential services (such as maintenance). Are you experiencing a factory slowdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic? If so, it would be a great time to call LMG to come take care of your machines.)

After reading the article and checking out the Pandemic loan and grant information at SBA.gov, you’ll know what to do. Then you can stop twiddling your thumbs and get busy! (And if you still don’t know what to do, please give me a call or send me an email at lasersolutions@comcast.net — I’m certain that, together, we can think of something!)

Laser service and maintenance is definitely something to be done during slowdowns, economic hiccups ... or pandemics!

With nearly 3 decades of laser service experience, I’ve seen a boat load of industrial laser situations. Some good, some … not so great. (I’d rather do laser maintenance than laser repair!) Here are some more case studies about those laser service experiences.

Laser Repair — When Industrial Lasers Fail, RUN!

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I’ve been involved in laser repair and maintenance for decades. Just when I think I’ve seen almost every industrial laser situation and scenario, I’ll hear about something new. Some situations just leave me shaking my head. Take these photos — and the video of the burning laser bellows, at the bottom of this post — I received recently.

The first one shows a CO2 Cincinnati laser during arc out. The next one shows the result of the arc out.

A CO2 laser during arc out. Don't take pictures of this! Turn the power off and RUN!When I saw these photos, my jaw literally dropped. Later, I told a friend:

“That laser arc out picture was amazing to see for sure.  The polymer block has a super high dielectric strength so it’s stunning to see it go all that way across it like that. The block had to be replaced. 
 
If they had reached 20,000Vdc, it would have gone through them instead (since people are conductive.)
 
It’s a good way to be killed or at the very least burned inside and out.”
 
The aftermath of a near disaster with a laser-cutting machine

Most importantly, and the lesson I want to impress on your mind, is this: Industrial laser machines are powerful. Treat them right, and they will work hard and do good work for you. But they can be extremely dangerous. In a situation like this, the people who took the photo of this industrial laser arc-out were VERY lucky!

 
They could have died.
 
Be Safe Around Industrial Laser Machines

Don’t die just for the sake of taking a cool photo or a selfie. Be aware of your surroundings. Treat your laser machines with care. If something like this starts to happen, if something doesn’t look, sound, smell or feel right, TURN OFF THE POWER!

If you can’t find something wrong, contact a qualified laser tech who can run a thorough check on your machine and repair or replace what’s needed. (In other words, call me BEFORE something like this happens!)

Perform Regular Laser Maintenance Before You Need Laser Repair

Even more important: Maintain your machines. Laser repair costs much more than routine, expert laser service and maintenance. Don’t let your machines get in a bad way, where your safety is compromised. I recommend having a routine laser service and maintenance plan, such as the laser services that we at LMG offer.
An ounce of prevention ….

Take care!

Scott, the Laser Service Guy
LaserSolutions@Comcast.net
423-593-7206

Here’s another example of what NOT to do: The laser was still cutting, but much more slowly than normal. The laser was off track and cutting through the laser machine’s bellows. DON’T VIDEO A DISASTER! It is dangerous (and makes laser repair much more difficult.) Shut down the laser machine!