Ablations on main mirror after cleaning with pec pads

It might sound silly but can the voltage power in europe make the laser stronger and burn the mirror?

It’s not possible, sorry. The switching power supply (the “power brick”) regulates the output DC voltage regardless of the input AC voltage, then comes the controller board inside the printer, with its own voltage regulator that keeps the output voltage stable, then there’s the laser driver, which keeps the laser output power constant via a feedback loop.

It is my understanding that the laser inside Form1 has a photo-diode that the driver uses to regulate the output power. Therefore, even if all the previous links in the chain were faulty, that last one would’ve kept things in check.

Also, despite what you might have heard, abrading a first surface mirror by cleaning it is actually not that easy and takes some effort. The aluminium layer evaporated onto the backing is (usually) protected with a thin layer of quartz, which has surface hardness comparable to glass.

I’ve got three hypotheses on what causes the ablation:

  1. bad mirror - simple as that, the silvering was sub-par and degrades over time, regardless of use

  2. laser interacting with something on the mirror - oil, dirt, protective coating leftovers that weren’t removed completely

  3. heat - first surface mirrors are “notorious” for being prone to damage under thermal shock, because the silvering layer tends to have a different thermal coefficient than the backing (i.e. stretches differently)

Out of curiosity - do you ever use water to clean the mirror?