Can the flex boost drive v5 be pulsed on/off

[kuhny1]

So in the middle of building my engraver, I wondered how safe it was to pulse my LD driver. I know that laser diodes are pulsed themselves in optical drives and obviously rarely any damage occurs. But the driver they use in optical drives are meant to be pulsed. So it's not the diode I'm concerned about but the driver I'm using. I know that the flex drive 5 is a pretty good (and a not so cheap) driver. The diode is a BDR-209 from dtr with a g2 lense with the driver set to what I'm assuming was 600mA. I dialed it way down to 350mA. And it still had plenty of power to cut through paper with ease. Hopefully this took some stress off the driver and diode. The driver is pulsed with 5v logic. No faster than 30 milliseconds off with varying on times from 0-255 milliseconds. Does anyone have any experience with pulsing these drivers relatively fast? I suppose they are designed for CW and that's what makes me nervous. I fear that if the driver goes so does the diode.

 

[CynicalBrad]

I don't think the flex drive v5 is meant to be pulsed. I do know there are drivers out there with exactly this kind of thing in mind though.

https://sites.google.com/site/dtrlpf/home/laser-cnc-engraving
If you scroll though this, there are links to a few drivers made with modulation inputs.

 

[kuhny1]

So after 50,000 pulses it still outputs as strong as it did. No loss in power but my room did smell like burnt paper, wood, and plastic coated cardboard. In fact there is way to much power and i ended up clamping the LD down. When i do cut things I can either go way slower or turn the current back up. I can not move the laser faster at this point because it messes up the Y axis and it "freaks out". Ill have to re-right my GCode interpreter i suppose.