OMTech Polar 350 : From the manual : “This CO₂ laser is intended for personal and professional use. When used as instructed, the Polar 350 is a Class 1 laser system but the active laser is invisible and must be used with great care to avoid serious property damage and severe personal injury. It works by emitting a powerful laser beam from a glass tube filled with carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and insulating gases; reflecting that beam off three mirrors and through a focal lens; and using this focused light to etch designs into a wide variety of materials including wood and cork, paper and cardboard, most plastics, glass, cloth and leather, and stone. It can also be used with some specially coated metals. With low intensity use, the provided tube has an average lifespan around 10,000 hours before requiring replacement. However, constantly running your laser above 70% of its rated power can significantly shorten its service life.“
The OMTech Polar 350 50W is a desktop CO2 laser engraver with a 510x300mm working area, capable of engraving various materials like wood, acrylic, and glass, featuring a 50W laser tube with an estimated 10,000-hour life, supporting LightBurn & RDWorks software, and including essential accessories like a built-in water chiller, camera, air assist, and rotary axes for cylindrical objects. It connects via Wi-Fi, USB, or Ethernet, offers speeds up to 500mm/s, and boasts an integrated fume extraction system for small workshops.
3rd Mirror – There is a term … FAFO which I modify as Forget And Find Out. In the manual on page 69 it talks about cleaning the third mirror. It mentions removing the shell to clean .. and I think that I need to put mine back on. The machine works fine without the shell .. BUT . . I now think it shields the 3rd mirror and focus lens from particulates to some extent.
My laser etched lines instead of cutting 1/8″ plywood. I finally got a look at the 3rd mirror .. well .. theoretically a mirror. I had to take a hand mirror to look at the 3rd mirror and found out “horrors!” that it was pretty much black. That is supposed to be a mirrored surface .. I think a golden mirrored surface. *sigh*
I have no one to blame but myself. The 3rd mirror is mounted at 45° and intercepts the horizontal laser beam and directs it downward. This means that unless you stand on your head you can’t really see the mirror .. and that means my little brain forgot to clean it .. and the last thing I did was to etch Laserboard .. and soot and who knows what settled on the mirror .. and sat there .. for a couple months. Oh woe!
Well .. Duh!!!
After a lot of searching the internet I finally figured out to email techsupport@omtech.com – I had an immediate response from Sunny at OMTech Customer Service. I quickly followed the link to purchase a new mirror. Next thing will be aligning the mirrors .. (insert *sigh*)
LED strip connector.