Originally Posted by
marty mcdonald
Hi guys,
I have a question related to the life of a laser tube and thought this would be the place to post my question.
I bought a VersaLaser VL200 back in 2004. I used it for maybe a total of 200 hours tops. Then it sat unused for far too many years.
I'm trying to find some motivation and get it going again and the red laser light shows on the material, but it doesn't etch or cut at all.
Is there a chance that the tube has lost all of its gas and I need to replace it?
Marty
I've got an early-2005 VL200, first tube lasted until 2009, second one is still in it, going strong, although I admittedly don't use the machine as much as I did 6-8 years ago. But FWIW, the distributor who sold me the machine originally said tube life was on the order of 4 years whether you run it continuously or just a couple hours a week.
Let's see, 4 years * 365 * 24 is near enough 35000 hours...YMMV.
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