So I just replaced the tube in my machine and got a wattage tester to confirm its output. After a lot of careful testing, I’m finding that it is maxing out at 110ish watts on a 130 watt tube. Because of this, I’m hoping to find a way to do a system wide power scale so that if for a part I need as much power as I can get, I can put it 100% into the cut list in lightburn, but have lightburn tell the machine to run at 90% power where my peak is.
I know about using shape properties to scale for power and this will not do what I am asking for. While per line that would work, it would require constantly informing lightburn to rescale each object that I’m cutting. I’m looking specifically for a setting that will apply before the power scaling in shape properties so that my machine will understand a 1% power command to be whatever I can make the machine start actually lasing at, and a 100% command to be the 90% of listed power where the measure output peaks.
I’m not sure it this makes sense as a question, I’m having a bit of a hard time explaining exactly what I’m looking for. Hopefully one of y’all can read my mind a bit on this one.
The “power” in LightBurn corresponds to a pulse-width-modulated value ranging from 0% = no power to 100% = full power. How the machine translates that PWM signal into actual laser current is up to the controller, not LightBurn.
For CO₂ machines, physics also gets in the way, because the tubes do not fire at less than about 10% of their rated current; your 130 W tube may not fire at less than 15% or so. Ruida controllers have Minimum and Maximum power settings, but (IIUC) those act as overall clipping levels, rather than scale points.
The high-voltage laser power supply has an analog potentiometer behind a tiny hole somewhere on its case to set the tube current when the controller calls for 100% power. You can adjust the pot so 100% produces whatever current you think appropriate for the high end, so that 100% = full throttle.
The trick is to set the power to 50%, then twiddle the pot until the supply delivers half the maximum current you want. The relation isn’t exactly linear, but it’ll be Close Enough™ for practical purposes.
So, basically, LightBurn will have a minimum power around 15% that will fire the tube and a maximum power of 100% (or 99%, whatever) adjusted to produce the tube’s rated maximum current.
