Broken Burleigh WA20-VIS (I know Sam has used these before)

Open the bottom. Most likely, you'll find the belt stretched out and sitting on the bottom cover. Replace it with anything that fits and you'll be good to go. :) An elastic band will work well enough to test it.

It's a wonderful machine. I just wish it was about 1/10th the size! :)

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Thanks Sam,

Opened it up and, just as your suggested, the belt was lying there. The noise is caused by the motor running without tension. Next problem: somebody got pump oil all over the vacuum chamber... but I know how to correct that.

Cheers,

-Matthew

Yeah, probably left it connected to the pump with power off and forgot to close the valve. :( :)

Take care cleaning the optical components (if they got oiled as well).

While it's open, you might as well do the alignment described in the manual.

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Alright... I got the new belts thanks to McMaster's fast shipping (hats off to those guys, always so quick). Now my next big problem: the motor is broken.

It should be easy enough to replace. Judging from how this machine works, I don't suppose that it's dependant on the speed on the motor. It's just counting and comparing fringes... I'm thinking I'll try to put a little graphite into the existing motor but my guess is that I'm going to need to replace it. I'll take it out, plug in a volt meter and see if I can find another motor hat runs about the same speed on the same juice. Ugh, what a pain.

Any ideas?

What do you mean: "broken". Doesn't run or makes a lot of noise or what?

Cleaning and lubing the bearings might cure the latter.

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Matthew Karam writes:

See? :)

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Important: Anyth> I spoke too soon. I took apart the motor, cleaned out all the bits of

Yup, the reference is working now. All the optics are aligned... adequately. The output doesn't give me anything that looks like a nice sine wave, but that's all in the screws :D

And the pump oil residue?.....

What do you mean by "the reference is working now" beyond the HeNe laser being on?

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The vac chamber is clean with the help of kim wipes and ethanol (the manual explicitly says not to use acetone). I mean the REF ERROR light is off, so the HeNe is working *and* the alignment is ok.

Yeah, because I guess the optics will fall apart. :( :)

There's not much else to go wrong.

If you push the test button, do you get the HeNe wavelength?

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I do get the HeNe wavelength with the test button. My task for today is to shoot in another reference laser and verify that the wavelength is reported properly.

Thanks again for all your help, Sam. This would have been a major pain without your help and your manual.... do you just keep archives of these things?

The beauty of this thing is that once you get that to work, almost everything else *has* to work. It may not be optimally aligned but should be close.

Yeah, somewhat randomly archived across various Web sites. :)

Thanks!

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