Material test pattern

[slideruleracer (Chris Bruno)]

Apologies if this is a dumb question - I’m brand new to lasers though not to CNC machining/3d printing/vinyl cutting.

I got my new-to-me machine setup yesterday (Boss ls1416) and started running my company logo on thin plywood for some initial experimentation. I was fiddling around with the speeds and max min power and discovered that below 10% power, my laser doesn’t fire at all. I also discovered that if I set a min power lower than my max, then for any short moves, it seems to automatically revert to the min power.

I attempted to use the material test pattern in ‘line’ mode to help me guage what level power yields different marking ‘depths’ but the pattern ended up printing a bunch of blank squares, presumably because it is choosing the min power based on the slowed speeds of the short squares? If I bump the min higher than 10% then I think I’m just getting a bunch of squares at the min power, so the test doesn’t end up telling me much.

So… any suggestions on what I am doing wrong?

I’m no longer at the machine and I forgot to take pictures, but I’ll be able to do more tests on Tuesday and wanted to see if I could learn a little bit more about what might be going on before I get back to it.

Thank you!

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Minimum and maximum power are used to control the power when the head has to change speeds for directional changes.

The Ruida will always be at minimum power when the speed is at or below the ‘start speed’ set in the Ruida. It will increase to maximum as it reaches full speed.

Make sense?

An image will ‘overscan’ and maintain the requested speed so the minimum isn’t’ used/needed. Unless you are specifically doing a ‘grayscale’ type engraving.