Running laser on my printer
Thank you all for your suggestions and help.

It appears that I was just running the printer too fast and slowing it down to about 10% of my original speed "fixed" my problem.
I don't know where i got the rediculous speed from, but 1200 mm/min is WAY too fast.
More like 150 to maybe 200 mm/min is what it should have been.

Oh well.. comes under the heading "pay attention" I guess!