lasersafe1 wrote:Now that I think about it, it is "effectively" CW beam from the tube and you should abide by the recommended currents. It might actually even be bad for the tube since it spends much more of its life in the "starting" state and less in the lower "running" state. We need a volunteer to run a tube 24/7/365 in this pulsed state to check life.
I don't think this will be much of a problem. I ran this mode for hours and hours at a time cutting out all the gifts for christmas (that's why I haven't posted anything lately... too busy with making the gifts). To answer the question, you have to think about what would be the failure mechanism. The bigest failure mechanism to worry about is overheating any of the components due to over current (specifically the mirrors). However, the actual duty cycle for the laser is much lower with this control method. Under most circumstances, the laser is on for 2ms and then off for 20-100ms which means that the duty cycle is only 2-10%. Now if the power level for that short burst is on average 2x the normal on (which is probably a big over estimate), the duty cycle is still only 5-20%.
I'm not sure how else we would really get the laser to fail. I don't claim to be an expert in this by any means, but I have had no problems and those doing engravings where the laser is being switched on and off frequently don't have problems. Besides, a tube is only about $150, so if I have hto replace that a little more often to get better results (which is not a statement of fact or experience at this point), then I would be willing to do that.