Rats, this thing just went up to a $30 quote from the local hub for “design fee to export solidworks files to STL”. Said the all in one STL would create a part that doesn’t move.
Not being familiar with 3d hub before today, am I now committed to paying him for doing the modeling work?
@Carl_Fisher I wouldn’t think so; I’d ask if I could change the model and then send him this the “Separated” version that I just put up (then again, to make this all I did was tell Repetier-Host to “split the model” and then rotate the arm until it was flat. Sheesh.).
@Thor_Johnson I gave the other guy a couple of bucks for his time but didn’t use him to print the part. I’ll see if I can reach out to you through your hub. Thanks
So when you hit the fire the laser test button that indicates where the laser will first fire but it will not tell you where the laser will start to cut or engrave this to me is a big one so what i do is do a simulation with out the laser on test firing the laser at different points then i postion my material accordinly, as to the mirror alignment it dose work as i have used this methiod to aligning my mirrors in this way you can tell exactly where the beam hit’s leaving the head to the first mirror thats how i found out that my head mirror was way out
@Dennis_Fuente Yep. So what I do is I turn the laser off, and tell the laser to run the pattern - you have to look at the indicator on the laser to see if it wanted the laser to be on (usually at a lower speed), and I position the part where I want it. I wait, then tell the laser to go to 2 dots and fire, and then I can position the fixture using the red dots. I’ll make an instructable on that…
@Carl_Fisher Did it work on your laser?
@Thor_Johnson It looks like it will but I haven’t had any time to test it yet. I still need to wire it up. What is the preferred method to clamp it in place? It’s on there now but slides around freely. Wondering if the material will hold up to a small grub screw tapped into it to fix the position.
It can handle that. I secured mine with a dot of gorilla glue (figuring I can break it with a screwdriver if necessary). You’ll slide it / bend the sheetmetal to get it aligned (similar to aligning the mirrors (min/max X&Y), but since the mirrors are aligned to the laser, you end up bending the sheetmetal lip [not much] to get this to align instead of messing with the mirrors – luckily you can see the dot, and the red laser doesn’t have to be as aligned as the CO2 laser since you’re “looking for a dot” instead of “trying to get max power”).
I think I’ll make another version that’s a little looser with a springiness to it and add 2 grub screws so you don’t have to bend the sheetmetal as much (though I had to tweak mine anyway because it wasn’t vertically aligned).
Something wrong with vice-grips being your friend…
LOL, fair enough. I also need to put the spring in there to push it down when I lift the lid. I think I’ll be glad for that little addition.
So I ended up not using the arm. There was too much play and I couldn’t get it lined up and keep it lined up so that it was repeatable. It was a good 1/2" lower than the mirror line which tells me that the arm is likely too long for my machine.