When first unpacking everything, the first thing I looked for was an operators manual. There was no paper manual, so I loaded the flash drive only to find a Chinglish manual that was a broad spectrum of machines from the CO2 laser to the Metal-Non-Metal machines. This made it extremely difficult to follow. The manual for RDWorks even had screenshots that were in Chinese. RDWorks would not even download from this drive. When I commented about this to Rick, he provided me with a newer PDF manual, YouTube Video and a link to find the software on Laguna’s website. If this information had been updated, then it should have been provided with the brand new machine or a notice provided, if I had not asked, I probably would have been at a complete loss.
I want to state that I am discouraged that the machine is not tested by any NRTL labs. (This is more of a personal preference and a legal issue when dealing with Insurance Claims.) I worked for Consumer Testing Labs (CTL) for approximately five years, they were purchased by UL last year. The machine is CE certified however this bears no weight here in the US, by my understanding the CE certification only bears weight in the European Markets. The laser itself is also FDA however by my understanding this does not pertain to the electrical system. I could provide hundreds of links for both sides of the situation however these two should be sufficient to express my concerns.
https://www.osha.gov/dts/shib/shib021610.html
Now I will provide photos and information directly related to my electrical concerns.
I was surprised when I was informed that this 150w laser ran on only one 110v 20 amp service, which in actuality it does not, it requires at least two 110V 20amp lines. Why it was not upgraded to a 220v input is beyond me. More on this later.
The first thing one sees as they plug the machine into an outlet is the power cord. This is how it arrived. Could/should be a lot cleaner!
The writing on the cord is in Chinese, so I am assuming that this cord is 12awg wire which is plenty sufficient for the load coming in on a 20amp service.
When the wire enters the back of the machine, it is directly connected to the Main Switch. From the Main Switch the power wire Immediately drops to 18awg. As I was trying to inspect and photograph these wires the spade terminal for the black wire completely fell out of the bottom of the Main Switch, I do not believe the terminal was even tightened at the factory. I had to remove the Main Switch to reconnect it. While photographing this issue the spade terminal fell completely off of the black wire, I was not even touching the wire when the spade terminal fell off of the wire. Upon inspection of the Main Switch, it was obvious that the terminal screw had not been tightened down. There was too large of a Gap.
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This loose connection made me go through the entire machine checking most of the terminal connections. The first connection that I came to was the other side of the same exact black wire. A very slight tug and the wire and plastic grommet came off of the metal part of the spade terminal.
These two 18 gauge wires come from the Main Switch to the first pair of fuses. From there the wires that exit look to be 20awg. These two 20awg wires power the entire machine from there on, which is rated approximately at 15amps considering the fuses are rated as such. This seems like an extremely large amount of current flowing through 20awg wire considering there is a
48v 12A PSU
24V 4A / 5V 3A Dual PSU
150W Laser Power supply
0.2A TP link
I am not an electrician or an expert on electrical connections by any means, these are just my observations and opinions. This wire might be sufficient but if it is, it is just barely skating by. There is no real reason not to slightly upgrade this to a higher awg wire, the cost is very negligible in comparison.