But in all seriousness - would Lightburn having an ‘apparent power’ value be worth having on a wider scale?
For example, at 100mm/s & 100% Power, on a 40w machine, 10mA max value on the analog meter would be 40Jmm^2 or something like that. Whereas 50mm/s & 100% power, would be 80Jmm^2.
Would this be useful to see in the settings window? Would it be useful to lock the ‘apparent power’ value while changing a speed value so that the two scaled in unison while keeping the apparent power? My thoughts are that once you’ve figured out that one machine, with a beam width of [X], needs [Y] joules of power in order to get through the material - it would be applicable across machines.
Of course, the nuances might be enough that this wouldn’t be useful at all - but I wanted some feedback before suggesting it on the suggestion portal. I was thinking about how every machine has their own personalized settings and how that might be rectified into a single value that might be useful across machines.
It’s not a bad goal, I’m just not sure how well it would work in practice. It assumes that tube power response is linear (it isn’t), that the PSU is optimally set (rarely true), and would not carry well across different tube types or laser sources.
Even within a single machine, running twice as fast with double the power does not produce the same burn - higher power & speed often burns lighter because the material vaporizes before it darkens.
I’m certainly open to being swayed here, but I’ve thought about this in the past, but decided there were just too many outside variables to make this viable.
That’s what I was afraid of. Too many variables makes things confusing for the user - so it may not be worth it in practice afterall. Additionally, like you said - wavelength of emission is another variable that changes how materials interact and absorb energy. A fiber laser of 50w has no problem etching steel for example, but a 100w laser at full blast barely makes a mark (comparatively).
