One of the mirror holders for our laser cutter at the Dim Sum Labs hackerspace is broken. A thread is damaged, and it is a pain to adjust
Any source for a replacement?
In the end I want to order on Taobao. A picture would be helpful for image search. So far I have not been successful finding a mirror holder there. As I assume the holders are cheap, I may just replace all of them.
Cloudray will sell you whole sets or individual parts for a variety of types. Here’s one example:
Here’s their whole category:
https://www.cloudraylaser.com/collections/laser-head-mirror-base-1
LightObject also sells them; here’s an example:
https://www.lightobject.com/Mount-Fixtures/Pro-25mm-Reflection-Mirror-Mount-for-Co2-Laser-Machine
Here’s their whole category:
https://www.lightobject.com/Search?CategoryId=17
I doubt you can order from either of those suppliers from Taobao; does Taobao make it hard to search?
I changed the mirror mounts and mirrors on my K40.
The result is:
There are 2 posts on the mount replacement:
There are 2 posts on tools for alignment:
This is the mirror mount I used.
It was the only place I was able to find single mounts (not a kit) that were compatible with the height and mirror diameter (20mm). I wanted to use the stock k40 size mirrors i.e. 20mm.
It so happens I am updating the documentation on this project in collaboration with another maker.
You may have to come up with your own design for your model machine but I am willing to share the design I have and provide any help you need.
I never got around to replacing the head and objective lens to make it adjustable although I would like to. I could not find the right size head assy, all that I looked at were too big.
Thanks anyhow! It’s interesting to see what’s out there, and I can upload the images into Taobao and let it search for similarly looking products. (results are sometimes entertaining)
It’s all in Chinese.
Thanks you very much for introducing me to this alternative system! For now, however, I just want to try playing with the standard setup.
In the end, I did find some mirror holders on Taobao that look somewhat close to the ones in our machine. However, I think there is a high risk that the mirrors will not be in the beam, and then we first need to fiddle with that. So I decided to simply replace the screws and continue using the existing mirror holders. They look a bit rough, but I hope with new screws, they will do the job. I also ordered some screw locking varnish, which you see as a little red dot on professional machines, sealing the optics once adjusted (easy to peel). Now I’m waiting for delivery from China to Hong Kong, which usually takes a few days even with express.
On our 100W CO2 in the FabLab we use Thorlabs mirror mounts. They are very precise to adjust.
https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=1492
