Confused about best approach to min power setting

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

@karaemilie

on the other hand, I have issues with cuts where there is a little “gap” on the cut area left where the cut starts stops.

This is most likely caused by a min power setting that is below the laser tube’s ionization point.

No laser output below 7% power setting

It’s called the ionization point of the tube, and it’s a properly of glass tube CO2 lasers. The minimum firing value tends to be roughly 10% of the wattage of the tube, because bigger tubes need a bigger kick to fire them. There’s a setting called ‘Engraving mode’ in the machine settings that you can change from ‘Common mode’ to ‘Special mode’ - with this setting, the tube is given a higher power kick for just a moment, and then the power is backed off, because it takes less to keep the laser …