Laser has no power

I use a Creality CR-10 v3 with the 1/2 W laser sold on their site. The laser is etching at most 8mm/s and that gives a very thin light line. Other than it being only a 1/2 W laser, why is it giving no power out at 100% setting?

What are you “etching” on? And what are you trying to achieve?

Most diode laser users will use mm/min units, 8mm/sec equals 480mm/min which in my experience would be kind of fast for a .5W laser depending on the material.

Just wood blanks from the hobby store. Thanks for the info!

Running some quick calculations on what I use with my laser and reducing it to power of your laser (I know it would not really be a linear equation, but it makes things easier) I run about 2000mm/min at 30% on a 15W module(~5W optical power) to get a light line in wood. Converting that to .3W (per Creality’s specs on their website) at 100% power would give you a speed of around 400mm/min (6.6666mm/sec) this is assuming they are talking optical power when they state 300mw.

It is going to take some testing on your part, but I think you may just need to slow down.

I’m confused - you say ‘gives a very light thin line’ and then ‘no power out at 100%’

It can’t be both.

Engraving a line, even a ‘thin and light’ one, is the laser putting something out.

With diodes, in my experience, unless you can’t go fast due to some mechanical reason, you don’t achieve anything by not using the full power - unless you have a ‘lying’ diode that pretends to be 30W or something, where running it at 100% will destroy it.

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