This is my first post. I’m trying to align my omtech laser with ruida controller to get things dialed in. I’ve aligned lasers in the past but it’s been a long time. The issue I’m having is aligning up and down on mirror 3 (adjusting mirror 2 in order to center the beam on mirror 3).
The beam is dead center on mirrors 1 and 2 along the y axis. I can align the beam to dead center of the hole of the laser head dead center with the head at the top left corner of the laser bed, but when I move the head to the bottom left, the beam isn’t even hitting the laser head. I had to hold up a large piece of wood to see where the beam was and it’s hitting way far down.
If I adjust the beam so that its centered at the bottom right, it’s very high up when the laser head is at the top left of the bed. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium here. I’m thinking about shimming the triangle metal piece that houses mirror 3 as the laser head itself seems to be too low.
I hope this made sense haha. I’ll try to provide some pics and/or graphics soon. Any advice is much appreciated. Please let me know if I’m missing any info I should hae provided up front.
If you have gone through all those alignment guides for understanding, and are still frustrated, you might be interested in reading 3rd mirror alignment tool which allows you to work backwards from the head, as well.
Hi there. Thanks for the reply. I read through the documentation you posted and unfortunately it didn’t tell me anything new. I’m going to give the reverse alignment tool a try, although I think my gantry mignt be out of whack.
I’d say it’s a new ish issue. I haven’t had the laser very long. the alignment wasn’t great but it was functional. having a lot of issues cutting on the left side of the bed. the raster detail wasn’t very consistent across the bed either. It’s on linear bearings. I finally have time to look at it again and I’m using the reverse alignment tool. I’ll add links to what I’m seeing.
I have it on point in the center of the mirror with the head in the left position. As the head moves to the right it drifts pretty far up and to the right.
So I adjust the mirror so that the point is a tiny bit below and to the left of the center point. that gets it in a pretty good spot with a little wiggle.
from there I go to mirror 1, mark the point where the reverse alignment tool is hitting, then I went to adjust the tube. I found that I can adjust it up and down, but there is no mechanism to adjust it left to right.
I also noticed that when I install the reverse alignment toolthere is a small amount of wiggle room left to right, which makes me feel like it’s not very useful. I used my calipers to measure the tool and my lens tube, and both are 16 mm
I appreciate the help. I’m getting exasperated aat this point.
You shouldn’t need to adjust the tube. Any chance that the holder for mirror 1 got moved? It looks like your mount has it in slots and you can move the whole body to get the mirror in the right place for the laser, and then use the stage screws to adjust the throw.
Also, pay attention to the point in the page to which I linked that using tape is a bad idea because it can leave adhesive detritus on the mirror that will kill the mirror.