The density floor closes the low end: a commanded 1 percent now marks

$35 = 10 under the density model is a density floor, not a duty floor. It
maps S onto 9.4-100 percent density, so a commanded 1 percent lands at
10.2 percent, just above the marking floor the earlier ladders measured.
A ladder reweighted to the bottom of the user scale - 1, 2, 5, 10, 20,
40, 70, 100 percent of S - marked on all eight rungs, with eight current
segments over a 42.0 s window against exactly 8 x 5.25, and segment means
climbing 136 to 968.

That meets the goal the ladders started from: a user's 1 percent is a
real visible mark rather than silence, and 100 percent is full power. It
took all three pieces - density so every level is real pulses, the
minimum pulse so they stay strikeable, the floor so the user's range sits
on the band that works.

dladder no longer tells the operator to re-run at other base periods to
choose one. The period cancels out of the low end, and what a failing
rung now indicates is a floor set too low.

docs/CAMPAIGN-LOG.md

@@ -3009,11 +3009,45 @@ in the direction that fails. The bench is back at 3.
 **Measured band for this tube: strikes from ~5 %, marks from ~10 % at F300.**
 
 Which closes the pulse-structure route to a usable 1 %. The interval grows as
-1/density, so 1 % implies an 11 ms gap, five times what already failed —
-no pulse shape reaches down there. The low end is a scaling problem: map the
-user's 1–100 onto the band that works, via `$35` as the density floor, which
-is what the factory does and why its cut scale starts at 18.9 % while its
-engraves reach 6.5 %. Both sit inside the band measured here independently.
+1/density, so 1 % implies an 11 ms gap, five times what already failed — no
+pulse shape reaches down there. The low end is a scaling problem.
+
+### The seventh ladder: the scale, and the goal met
+
+`$35 = 10` — a density floor under this model, not a duty floor — with the
+ladder reweighted to the bottom of the user scale (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 40, 70,
+100 % of S), since with a floor in place what matters is whether the lowest
+levels a user can dial in still mark.
+
+The mapping puts S onto 9.4–100 % density, so a commanded 1 % lands at 10.2 %,
+just above the ~10 % marking floor the earlier ladders measured. **All eight
+rungs marked.** The trace carries eight current segments — boundaries at 14.3,
+19.5, ~24.85, 30.2, 35.4, 40.9 and 46.1 s, fire spanning 9.1 → 51.1 s = 42.0 s
+against exactly 8 × 5.25 — with means climbing monotonically:
+
+| rung | commanded | density | mean current |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| 1 | **1 %** | 10.2 % | 136 |
+| 2 | 2 % | 11.0 % | 190 |
+| 3 | 5 % | 13.4 % | 214 |
+| 4 | 10 % | 18.1 % | 262 |
+| 5 | 20 % | 27.6 % | 331 |
+| 6 | 40 % | 45.7 % | 340 |
+| 7 | 70 % | 72.4 % | 444 |
+| 8 | 100 % | 100 % | 968 flat |
+
+So the original goal is met: a user's 1 % is a real, visible mark rather than
+silence, and 100 % is full power. It took the density model to make every
+level real pulses, the minimum pulse to keep them strikeable, and the floor to
+put the user's range on the band that works — the same three pieces the
+factory uses, arrived at from this bench's own measurements.
+
+Owed: the shipping defaults. `laser_power_model` still defaults to `analog`,
+so none of this reaches a machine until the key is set, and `$35` must move
+with the model (16 is the analog duty floor, 10 the density floor; the wrong
+pairing is a dead band either way). Both want one real job at a production
+feed first — every ladder here ran at F300 or F100, where dose per millimeter
+is generous, and no raster has run at all.
 
 ## Superseded status notes