Hello self-builders! It's been a while since we posted but we are always interested in what people are doing to improve the world of laser engravers. Here's some useful information:
Here's a page out of a 50W RF Universal laser OEM module. Notice 50us on delay before the laser even does anything then 126us delay before it reaches full power = 176us on delay.
Here's a measurement we took with our 10mhz high speed optical detector designed for 10.6um of a typical DC glass CO2 tube. This is a 5ms pulse (yellow). ON=LOW, OFF=HIGH. Notice it takes 500us from totally off to hit the peak then an additional 1ms before the tube stabilizes at stable power. High peak initial power is from plasma ignition which stabilizes after overcoming the initial resistance barrier.
After doing many pulse waveforms of various on/off times, we conclude a rise/fall time of around 500us to 2ms on most typical glass tubes/power supplies depending on past history, temperature, power supply, etc.
Let's do some calculations:
So 1000dpi at 30ips=30,000 on/off pulses/sec= 33us per pulse. But typical reaction time is 500us... so power must be averaged over several pixels. You may also know that dithering + averaging filter = gray.
We allow you to come to your own conclusions given these experimental results.
Don't believe everything sales people tell you
Best of luck in your project!