I’ve got the Opt 15W on my deployable laser system and I’m searching for a more accurate way to measure the x/y offset relative to the currently suggested method.
I’m frequently servicing, adjusting, upgrading, and modifying my z-axis components to expand my operating envelope as my projects get successively more ambitious and this means re-establishing a slightly different laser offset each time.
I need to keep my accuracy to within .005" and have resorted to aligning the laser burn to the edges of spindle-cut pockets.
Having to manually adjust the offset in the Wizard and restarting the software and machine to dial in the alignment incrementally gets very tedious and re-homing the machine for every adjustment invites a tiny bit of variance considering the nature of proximity switches.
To make matters worse I’ve got an extended focal length lens that has the laser (with short nozzle) at +32mm above the material surface (rather than the usual +12mm).
Because the spindle and laser mount aren’t guaranteed to be perfectly parallel the offset needs to be established like dialing in a firearm optic for a specific range - so even if the auto-z/corner finder plate could be used to establish the offset it may still need adjustment once it’s returned to proper focal distance.
Any ideas or am I just SOL?
Best thing I’ve found to do is this:
Set the XY offset using the standard procedure.
Then take a V bit and carve a square. Then take the laser and burn the exact same square in the same place.
You can then use a set of calipers to very accurately measure the offset between the carved square and your laser line. You can key those values right into the wizard without having to restart the control and do another burn to test.
If you measure carefully you’ll likely get it on the first try.
Makes sense.
Thank you Eric
Here’s what I do. I built a laser edge finder a while back and here is the video on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpS58Jjl3JM&t=5s
So with the EX control system, put a sheet of something with a corner on it, and a dowel or bit in the collet and use the touch plate to find the corner on the spindle. Then I make sure the spindle is at X0/Y0. Then I run the laser offset calibration in the EX utilities. It will ask you to put the spindle at 0, 0, which it already is, so just accept the current position. Then you get to the laser part, move the touchplate and put the laser corner finder on the same corner and find the X0/Y0 with the laser corner finder. You should be able to get them lined up within 5-10 thousandths that way.
Then write down the offsets (you can find them in the wizzard or in the parameters list) so that next software install you can just write the numbers in instead of doing the whole calibration each time. I have muliple lasers so I switch back and forth all the time and I just keep everything in a spreadsheet and update the parameters.
Brilliant Jim!
Thank you for that.
I love spreadsheets. We should date.