Dead ULS VL200

[Kev Williams]

What's this guy's name, he may be getting the power supply to my IS7000. My rep says $6000 new, which means roughly $2800 for re-man from Gravograph. I'm still hoping my rep can find the problem...

As for a $600 power supply, for a new one for my LS900 I was quoted $3300, but 'fortunately' they'd just barely finished rebuilding one, which I got the next day for $1700 including shipping. Machine's been fine ever since...

Hey, the machines and their power supplies are built in France for these machines only, whaddya gonna do? Gotta have the machine to make a living...

[Bert Kemp]

Lee ULS is just down the road from me if there's anything I can do to help you out with them just holler. Sometimes a person staring them in the face works faster then email and phone calls

Might come to that, depending what ULS says. I doubt availability will be an issue: the one in there now is US-sourced rather than Chinese. (That's both good and bad...it may explain some of the pricing.) I'll certainly check their website, keeping in mind that ULS may have modded it before installation.

[Lee DeRaud]

Lee ULS is just down the road from me if there's anything I can do to help you out with them just holler. Sometimes a person staring them in the face works faster then email and phone calls

Sent them an email this morning...they got back to me in about two hours, probably a lot less than that depending on when they show up for work.

Turns out the connection between the CPU and P/S is an 'inhibit' rather than an 'enable', so unhooking it should allow the P/S to light up on its own. Tried that, and the fan doesn't even come on, much less any voltage at the outputs. So it's either well and truly fried, or at least the inhibit circuit is shorted closed. Waiting to see what comes next.

I found an outfit just five miles from the house that specializes in repairing power supplies, everything from commodity PC units to supplies for medical equipment. Unless the ULS replacement turns out to be an exchange deal like the laser tube, I may try getting this one fixed first. Worst case, the machine is down for an extra week or two, but it's not like I'm running a business off it.

[Ruben Salcedo]

No, you don't need to send the PS, you can keep it as a souvenir, here is mine. (...or fix it)


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[Bill George]

I am NOT an electronics person who knows circuits well but I have worked on and repaired things I knew little about. Yes I have an electrical background and was active in ham (amateur ) radio when you had to know something to pass the test. I would pull the cover off and look for fried parts or capacitors that have bulged or blew up. You would also be surprised at the number of bad solder connections I have found and fixed. The prices they are charging are almost bank robbery tactics.

[Lee DeRaud]

No, you don't need to send the PS, you can keep it as a souvenir, here is mine. (...or fix it)

Well, that looks familiar.

Just dropped mine off at the repair place: they're quoting $125 flat-rate to repair that size supply, no charge if not repairable. Current ULS price is $425, for $300 it's worth a shot at getting the old one back up and running.

Regarding that price, I think you got a new one (made by Meanwell) when they were transitioning from the original XPiQ supply. The way the ULS guy worded it, that $425 is for a remanufactured Meanwell unit, which is what you'll probably get if your current one dies.

[Lee DeRaud]

I am NOT an electronics person who knows circuits well but I have worked on and repaired things I knew little about. Yes I have an electrical background and was active in ham (amateur ) radio when you had to know something to pass the test. I would pull the cover off and look for fried parts or capacitors that have bulged or blew up. You would also be surprised at the number of bad solder connections I have found and fixed.

I took a quick look before I took it to the repair guy, but nothing jumped out at me. Lacking schematics, I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it anyway.

The prices they are charging are almost bank robbery tactics.

True that. Was the 48V 12A unit I had in my CNC router as good as the similar-size ULS supply? Probably not. Did it have the fancy external on/off control? No. Then again, it was only $120 retail. But for $600, I'd expect something a bit more bullet-proof than the apparently fragile one it came with.

[Bill George]

When I did my CNC milling machine controls change over, everything went in the dumpster except the stepper motors and mounts. I built my own power supply and used Gecko driver boards and DeskCNC for the controller. It worked good enough, made a few things and moved on to a purchased CNC router. I have built a few ham radio PS units and built a lot of HeathKits. I wonder how many people remember them?

[Ruben Salcedo]

I don't remember there been an option of a remanufactured PS, I even made a comment of been expensive, the response was that I was getting a much better, more robust PS than the original one, perhaps I did get a brand new one... now $425.00 sounds a bargain to me... $125.00? a gift, hopefully they will be able to fix it for you.

Good luck.

[Paul Phillips]

The prices they are charging are almost bank robbery tactics.

It doesn't make sense to me why manufacturers want to gouge people so bad on their parts, (see my recent thread on the ULS laser tubes going up!) if it was a reasonable price I wouldn't mind paying it, I understand they need to mark it up a bit to make some profit but what is a reasonable amount of markup? 40%-50%? From an end user standpoint I have no idea, certainly anything above 100% seems too much IMO. I dealt with this when I needed to start replacing worn parts on my Multicam CNCs, I had to have a spindle repaired and they wanted about $3000. to repair it, I found the NA distributor and went directly to them and found I could save over $1000, since then I have relied on the internet to help me track down the manufacturer parts and save myself a lot of money, probably a result of the internet age that allows people to do that, but companies should get wise to the fact that people know how to use google!?

[Lee DeRaud]

Ok, quick update...

The repair guy is having no end of problems: it's one of those "fix A which uncovers problem B, lather rinse repeat" deals, and he's on his third round of waiting for parts to arrive. I went ahead and got a "new" power supply from ULS, installed it, and it works. That's the good news.

The bad news is, there is apparently a short somewhere in the laser tube itself. If it's plugged in, the P/S goes into overcurrent shutdown mode every time you shut the lid and the CPU enables the tube. Not clear if the old P/S fried the tube when it let go, or the (nearly new) tube let go and fried the P/S. At least the tube is still under warranty, in theory anyway. I'm working with my distributor to verify
the diagnosis, we'll see how it goes from there.

Regarding the new power supply: $425 from ULS, including an adapter cable that probably cost $2 in parts and 1/2 hour of labor to fabricate. Unless there were some unobvious and major custom ULS-specific mods, the supply is available for $130, quantity 1, from a US-based distributor. Draw your own conclusions about how much they cost ULS in production quantities.

[Mike Null]

Lee

You have one of the sharpest ULS guys in the US not far from you. His name is Mike Mckenzie. https://www.cemlasers.com/pg--8--Contact-Us.aspx

[Lee DeRaud]

Lee

You have one of the sharpest ULS guys in the US not far from you. His name is Mike Mckenzie. https://www.cemlasers.com/pg--8--Contact-Us.aspx

Yup, he's who I'm dealing with...bought the laser from him in early 2005.

[Lee DeRaud]

Humped the whole machine down to Mike's shop yesterday, and verified that the tube had a short in it somewhere. ULS has shipped a warranty replacement, which should be here tomorrow. I'll report back on how it goes, but the machine ran fine with Mike's tube installed.

As per Murphy's Law, got home from there to find email from the repair guy that he finally got the old P/S up and running...I guess I'll put it up for sale in the classified section. If that doesn't work I guess I have a spare, for whatever that's worth.

[Ruben Salcedo]

See, I told you that the cost of the PS would be $600.00


Can't you return the one from UL?