What does the cut setting “minimum power” control?
I’ve just been using “max power” for everything I’ve been doing and have ignored “min power”.
(I’ve looked through the tutorials and have done a bit of googling to try to figure this out before posting).
From the website " Min Power
For DSP devices (not GCode based controllers) this is the minimum percentage of power that the laser will produce during the cut. On Ruida machines, this is power setting that will be used during a cut when the machine slows down to reverse direction, or make a sharp corner. You should normally set this number to just above the threshold where your laser fires. Setting it the same as Max Power means the laser will not change power output as the speed varies, which will result in a poorer quality cut, particularly on thinner materials."
Min Power is used for cuts where the head will be changing directions, slowing down the speeding up again, where you want to not over burn the corners. DSP controllers like the Ruida will ramp, within the range of the Min to Max Power based on the speed the head is traveling. Min Power set too high, over burned corners. Set too low, the laser will not “fire” and will not mark/cut in the corners. The firing point is the ionization point of the glass tube. The bigger the tube, the higher this point, which is why some “heavy cutting” machines include a 2nd, smaller tube for engraving.
LightBurn also uses the Min and Max range when using the ‘Power Scale’ feature.
The min power setting is ignored for everything but grayscale on GCode based devices. The setting for this is in firmware, and can’t be specified per-cut like the high-end DSP controllers do.
Thanks Sam - didn’t see the documentation section on the website, will make sure I go there first next time.
Great explanation, thanks Rick!