MAX MIN power
Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2019
CO2 Laser have a max power output and minimum power out put. Pretty obvious, but what is not obvious is the min and max may or may not be 0% or 100% power - in fact they are almost never 0 or 100. 8%-12% is a pretty common minimum power your laser will actually fire and have sufficient energy to engrave. 65%-85% is a pretty typical range for a max power. Above your machines max power you put in more power than the laser outputs
to cut or engrave.
I have a watt meter that measures the energy out of the laser head.
The left axis (Y) is the power I programed into my test layer, the bottom axis (X) was the % power I selected in my layer
The Blue line shows the measured power in watts and the orange/brown line shows the power in milliamps displayed on my installed power meter
I listed the actual measured or displayed powers on each line for the corresponding x/y value tested.
Blue line - My laser will not fire energy to engrave below 10%-11% so setting a power below 10% does nothing - unless that was you goal
Blue line - at 90% power programed into my test layer I get 89.5 watts - beyond 90% I would be overdriving my tube by putting more energy in than the tube can convert into use energy - that extra power will prematurely kill you tube if you do it often enough.
So On my System I would not exceed 22 milliamps during operation, I would not program a power in any layer Greater than 85% to be safe and I rarely would use a power below 10% - but I might use 9% in some case where I am using a range of power when selecting direct output to cut a 3D image
9%-40% would be a better setting than 0%-40% for the sake of the laser response time and effectively be the same thing.
Generally speaking the lower the power rating of the laser the more shallow the slope of the blue line - which translate into finer control of power over a given range and therefore more control of power when engraving. On my machine I change power by 0.5 % power and see a difference (12.0% vs 12.5%, but I can't see a difference smaller than 0.5% and not always is the different noticeable.
A 35 watt machine can usually see a difference of 0.2% and sometime less (12.0% vs 12.2%)
Ya gotta know your limitations.
The graph below is the result of testing on my machine - it is only correct for my machine. I posted the graph as an example to explain how power change with the programed power in a layer. (and this data may not be good today because I had to replace my power supply - So I should really reperform my measurements since I modified the system since initial testing.
to cut or engrave.
I have a watt meter that measures the energy out of the laser head.
The left axis (Y) is the power I programed into my test layer, the bottom axis (X) was the % power I selected in my layer
The Blue line shows the measured power in watts and the orange/brown line shows the power in milliamps displayed on my installed power meter
I listed the actual measured or displayed powers on each line for the corresponding x/y value tested.
Blue line - My laser will not fire energy to engrave below 10%-11% so setting a power below 10% does nothing - unless that was you goal
Blue line - at 90% power programed into my test layer I get 89.5 watts - beyond 90% I would be overdriving my tube by putting more energy in than the tube can convert into use energy - that extra power will prematurely kill you tube if you do it often enough.
So On my System I would not exceed 22 milliamps during operation, I would not program a power in any layer Greater than 85% to be safe and I rarely would use a power below 10% - but I might use 9% in some case where I am using a range of power when selecting direct output to cut a 3D image
9%-40% would be a better setting than 0%-40% for the sake of the laser response time and effectively be the same thing.
Generally speaking the lower the power rating of the laser the more shallow the slope of the blue line - which translate into finer control of power over a given range and therefore more control of power when engraving. On my machine I change power by 0.5 % power and see a difference (12.0% vs 12.5%, but I can't see a difference smaller than 0.5% and not always is the different noticeable.
A 35 watt machine can usually see a difference of 0.2% and sometime less (12.0% vs 12.2%)
Ya gotta know your limitations.
The graph below is the result of testing on my machine - it is only correct for my machine. I posted the graph as an example to explain how power change with the programed power in a layer. (and this data may not be good today because I had to replace my power supply - So I should really reperform my measurements since I modified the system since initial testing.