I think I may have tweaked a setting by accident because my Marlin based CNC Laser is now using dots to cut instead of a continuous line. I am using the standard Creality laser on a custom 3-axis CNC I built. Any ideas on what could be causing this?
Might you have enabled perforation mode? It’s odd that you don’t have the issue with vertical lines though.
That’s the only setting I could find as well, but I confirmed it is turned off.
Does this happen for all designs including older ones or just on this one?
My issue was that I had //#define FAN_SOFT_PWM enabled in Marlin. This caused the laser to work as normal at %100 power but it would flicker when given less power. So it looks like the Hardware PWM is better than the Software PWM on this Creality V2.2.1 Ramps 1.4 mainboard. Thanks everyone for the help!
So you’re using the fan pins to control laser PWM? Typically fan PWM frequency is fairly low, lower than you’d want to be able to control a laser with any decent control.
Normally you’d want this minimally in the 1 KHz range. Do you know what those pins are capable of providing?
This is the board I am using: Official Creality Silent Board v2.2.1 For CR-10 S4 S5/CR-X/Ender 5 Plu - 3D Printing Canada
And this is the laser: https://www.amazon.com/Creality-Engraver-Engraving-Attachment-Blue-Violet/dp/B08SHCJ7V4
My understanding was that since the laser is smaller and less powerful it didn’t matter as much but I may be wrong
I’ll assume that laser module supports PWM since you’ve been configuring it but in that case the power of the laser isn’t so much the determining factor around relevance of frequency. It’s more about the level of detail and control available to you. If your PWM frequency is only let’s say 32 Hz that’s going to make it virtually impossible to get you a highly detailed photo engraving… at least at any decent speed.
I couldn’t really get any details about that board and the relevant pinout information. I might not have been looking at the right place. But if frequency is variable try to configure it to at least 1 KHz… assuming the laser module supports that.
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