Workshop Compressed Air Pressure Monitoring

For Foote and Flame, the CO2 laser cutters that we used had a standard air assist feature. This air assist dramatically improves the quality of the cut, and has an added bonus: significantly reduces the fire risk in machines.

Some of our early CO2 laser cutter fires were caused by a fault with our first air compressor. So I set out to prevent this...

What it did

A sensor monitored the air pressure in the air assist lines. If the pressure dropped below a set threshold, a very obvious audible warning would be issued in the workshop to let us know. It would repeat every 15 seconds until it was resolved.

In addition, when you started a job on a machine, if the air was not available, it would also give an audible warning to let you know there was no air - so you could fix it immediately!

What it was not

This was not a safety system to protect against injury or loss of life. It was a monitoring system. It did not replace human oversight, but worked to provide an extra layer on top of humans. Humans still had to be in very close proximity to the laser cutters at all times during operation as a standard safety practice. This system just gave us advance warning of issues with the air supply, especially the low pressure warning.

Future versions

Later on, the laser cutters were modified to have a safety interlock that would prevent the laser from firing if the air pressure was too low. This was all implemented on the low voltage (24V) side of the machine, and used the existing Water Protect interlock that's part of most laser cutter controllers - in our case, Ruida controllers.

Advanced project

We're not a safety system provider, and this did require some low voltage wiring and modifications to a machine. It's not a project we would take on for you, but may give you some ideas of things that might be possible with your own machines, or something you can ask your machine vendor for. Many CNC machines can be programmed with additional interlocks to prevent operation under unsafe conditions.