Sounds like the problem! I had suspected this.
Ruida has a “start speed”, and while it technically can be set to 1mm/sec, it will add inexplicable random unrelated bugginess if you go below 5mm/s. You cannot set it to 0. You can’t ever set it to 0.5mm/sec (30 mm/min). When the head is going below the start speed, it uses Min Power. Even if it’s not due to acceleration limits at that instant but rather the Layer asked for a lower speed intentionally.
15% power may be difficult to get most lasers down to in an orderly fashion. They become less stable. There’s no good way to get a 100W DC-excited CO2 tube to produce, say, 10W. It’s a steep slope of output power vs duty in this area, and inconsistent. You can come up with an exact, say 12% to get 10W, but then 11% is no beam at all and 13% is 15W, and the power you get at 12% varies, sometimes giving 15W and sometimes no-beam.
So, a Ruida’s start speed can be a problem. And the larger the DC-CO2 laser would be, the less stable it is trying to get something like 10W output