A friendly reminder to those of you who own a CO2 laser cutter: always make sure your coolant is running!
The other day when I was doing some test cuts during the latest batch of upgrades, I forgot to turn on my new chiller (I hadn’t put it in interlock yet – now I have ;-)). After a couple of minutes, I noticed water squirting from the back of my machine. I immediately pressed the emegency stop, but at that point the most plausible turn of events was that my brand new (!) tube had cracked due to insufficient (read: no) cooling and water was leaking out.
You’ll understand my joy when I eventually collected the courage to investigate the damage, and saw that the glass tube was still intact. Apparently, the water in the rubber hoses to and from the laser tube got plenty hot, which made the rubber soft enough to just pop off. Nothing was broken, nothing was damaged by the water… Phew… that was a close call!
Okay okay to be completely honest the water did leak into my ceiling but I still consider it a win ;-). Everything is cleaned and dried up now. New (stiffer) water hoses have been installed, and the coolant circuit now automatically enables when I power on the machine.
