I’m awaiting delivery of a new 100-watt CO2 laser with a Ruida controller. Until now I’ve used diode lasers mounted on my CNC. My question is about control wiring.
On a diode laser, power is supplied to the driver from a discrete power supply. The laser connects to the driver and a control signal is sent to the driver from the controller through two wires.
Is the control setup the same with a CO2? Obviously the laser has its own power supply. I know the controller also controls motion, but does it have two wires that control the laser output?
The laser is powered by a specific high voltage PSU (~20kv)
The controller and steppers are powered by a different (or multiple) PSU’s
The controller has a connection to the LPSU to control the power, if you have a laser that is able to be power controlled.
I think this is what I was looking for. It SHOULD work exactly the same way a diode laser works if I’m right. It “has a connection”. Is this connection 2 wires? They would simply tell the LPSU when to fire the laser and at what power level?
Understood. It’s a 100-watt Chinese with the Ruida RDC6445G controller. No idea on the power supply yet, more info on that when I have it. I know it comes wired, I’m looking into a modification in case it’s needed.
There are usually two connections for CO2 glass tube lasers. One is TTL (called L-On on a Ruida controller) and that is what enables the high voltage output on the LPSU. The other, PWM, L-PWM, or Analog out, is the power level. They’re independent, and Ruida typically ramps the power up on the L-PWM output before turning on the L-On signal.
On RF-excited metal tubes, only the L-PWM output is used. You can configure this in the vendor settings of the controller, which means a Ruida can also control diodes, as this is more commonly how those work.