SFA: What's the Answer?
Is the Laser Dead? Or Just Lost?
Teef Premium Member
HI guys,
Looking for some help. We have a 1.5-year-old nc300 Breton. The laser positioning system has stopped working; Breton says we need a new one for 22k. I've emailed LAP, as their website says 30,000 working hours. I haven't heard back yet. We might have 300 on it. If that. its only on when loading the tables. Any ideas for solutions?
Thanks.
Nick Teefy Counterreactions Uxbridge Ont.
gss fabrication Premium Member
That is a little crazy that it died after 18 months. Before I would drop $22k on a replacement laser, I would find out for sure it needed to be replaced. There is not much you can do without opening it up and you can cause more harm quite easily if you are not experienced in working with optics and high-powered electronics.
You could find someone who can diagnose what went bad and repair it. Could be something simple like a fuse or power supply, or more involved like the pumping diodes/servos. If Breton is not helpful I would reach out to LAP directly and ask if you can send it for repair. It has to be less than the $22k for a replacement. Unfortunately, not having the laser means you have to manually line up parts on the machine or are losing out on production i.e., income while it is down. It is a tough position to be in.
Alternatively, you might ask Breton if there is a laser from another manufacturer that can be configured to work with your machine. There are a few companies that are out there that make a quality product that probably is not $22k to replace.
Let us know how it turns out.
Rick Graff GSS Fabrication Inc. Richland, Wash. estimating@gssfabrication.com 509-375-1960
Alex DiPietro Premium Member
The same laser that Breton quotes for $21,500 is $7k direct from lap (red). They will also get you a loaner laser. Same cost differential is true for other lap parts, buy as much as you can direct from the parts companies… Here are some contacts: L.Lease@lap-laser.com T.Gaudet@lap-laser.com Alex DiPietro Rye Marble Inc. Rye, N.Y.
Teef Premium Member
Thanks Alex. Turns out we lost a week of production for a IP address that keeps changing internally in the machine. We have had this issue about 5 times. Techs normally change it and we are back up. But this time went to the worst-case scenario without troubleshooting first. We got a laser from our sales guy. He had a used one off a machine. We swapped it out and same issue. I’m not a happy camper about this. I did speak with LAP; they were helpful..
gssfabrication Premium Member
If it is an IP-address reservation issue that can be mitigated on your network. On your network router/firewall/DHCP server you can reserve a specific IP address for a specific MAC address. Every computer on your network has a unique MAC address; even if that device (let’s say the laser) is configured to always use a hard-coded address in its settings; your network router can prevent giving out that address even by accident. You can even define in that network router that MAC address [laser] ALWAYS uses XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX IP address. Here is one way I have set this up at various locations: Network Router/firewall/DHCP server has an available pool of addresses from: 192.168.10.20-192.168.10.254 Devices that I want to stay at a specific address I hardcode in that device in positions .2 thru .19 (Laser, CNC Router, Copier, SomeOldPrinter, etc.) Then I reserve the MAC of that machine in the network router/firewall/DHCP server to be assigned a specific IP address. i.e. 192.168.10.5 [MAC of CNC Laser] 192.168.10.6 [Copier] As a side note; always reserve the .1 or .255 address for your router to make things easier to figure out what device handles your network traffic; in this example my firewall/network router would be 192.168.10.1. Those devices that depend on a specific IP address will always be able to talk to them unless someone makes the mistake of configuring another device to use the same address. In which case, you can track down who changed something recently and tell them they borked up a perfectly fine network. Glad you got it worked out!