I just got the LaserBeam, and I’m happy with the marking it can do. For reference, I also have a Creality Falcon 2 40W laser. So I have experience marking/cutting with lasers on wood. I also have realistic expectations for what this 7W laser is capable of doing. That being said, can someone talk to me about the power setting for this laser? I understand the dip switches essentially giving you different power settings in 20% increments. What I don’t understand is how or if software (Lightburn) is having any effect on power. Does it? I just tried running some speed/power tests in LB and what I’m seeing is that only the speed is being affected and the power is staying constant at 100% output. What am I missing? Is there a setting somewhere that I need to change to make the power adjustable?
Also, assuming the power can be controlled via LB, are the dip switches ultimately setting a maximum power output for the laser that LB must work within? In other words, if the dip switches are set for 80% power, is 100% power in LB only going to output at a maximum of 80% because of the dip switches? What overrides what?
The dips cap the output power of the laser. There is adjustment from the cap down to 0. 0-255 power levels for each step. I don’t use LB instead I just use the laser like an engraving tool and generate the gcode straight from Vcarve. I know I’ve seen one of the Laserbeam videos where the power level is set within LB but again it will be capped based on where your dip switches are set.
@cmorrowk LB does control the output power. I don’t have the laserbeam, but if I did, I would never take if off of dipswitch 5. The power can be controlled in LB or in any of the Vectric applications, if that is what you are using.
In answer to your question, you are correct. If you set dipswitch 4, that is the max power that LB can control. In other words, 100% in LB is really only 80% of the power that the laser can actually generate. To me, if I wanted 80% power out of the laser, I would to set the dipswitch to 5 = 100% power and tell LB that I wanted to burn at 80% power. If I wanted 70%, I would set LB to 70%. (If the dipswitch was set to 80 and I wanted 70, I would need to set LB to 87.5 (80 x 87.5 = 70.)That’s too much math for me.)
The most important thing to keep in mind using LB is the Smax must be the same as your $30 setting. LB recommends setting it to 1000. Sienci recommends 255. Again, I like 1000 as the math is easier. In VCarvePro, I can set the speed=power to 500 if I want half power. If I set $30 to 255, I need to set it to 255x.50=127.5. Too much math again.
That’s what I thought (dip switches are limiting actual power output). With other lasers, I’ve always used LB to set the power level. But what has me confused, is the speed/power test I attempted today. I saw no difference in power. Only the speed was causing the engraving to have a lighter burn. It burned at 100% the entire time. I even ended the test early when I saw that there was no point in continuing. Any reason why I wouldn’t see variability in power output if the dip was set at 5 and the LB speed/power test was set to test 10%-100% power?
@cmorrowk As you can likely see, I’m fast running out of ideas here. Take a look at this post by Paul. If you have a multimeter, his instructions are an excellent way to see if the pwm port on your lb is working as it should be.
Thank you for the info. I’m not going to stress over it that much. As I said earlier, I can adjust the speed to run a bit faster to avoid burning anything. I was just curious to know if there was anything else I was missing. I’m still quite pleased with the laserbeam. And I will likely upgrade to the SLB sometime soon.
