Laser output power control method, and laser processing device

A laser output power control method to be executed by a control unit in a laser processing device, the device including:

• a laser oscillator;
• an output measurement unit that measures a light amount of a laser beam emitted by the laser oscillator;
• and
• the control unit that performs feedback control on a driving current to be supplied to the laser oscillator based on a measured value of the output measurement unit to bring a laser output power of the laser beam close to a target value,
• the laser output power control method executing:
• a first execution step of executing a pre-update program to set the target value to a value defined by the pre-update program and performing the feedback control;
• a detection step of detecting an output fluctuation in which a difference between the laser output power and the target value during execution of the first execution step exceeds a predetermined threshold;
• a specification step of specifying a physical quantity for which a measured value within a predetermined monitoring time before an occurrence timing of the output fluctuation detected in the detection step does not satisfy a predetermined condition as an abnormal physical quantity from a plurality of physical quantities measured in the laser processing device during execution of the first execution step;
• and
• a program update step of detecting appearance of a predetermined feature in an abnormal physical quantity specified in the specification step as a fluctuation factor during execution of a post-update program, and updating the pre-update program to the post-update program to perform, after detection of the fluctuation factor, at least one of a correction process of correcting the driving current to reduce a difference between the laser output power and the target value as compared with when the output fluctuation occurs in the first execution step or a warning process of causing an output device to output a warning.