Take Your Diode Laser to the Next Level: Add a Crosshair for Precision
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2024
- Most diode lasers lack a proper laser crosshair to precisely position projects on material, and in this project video, I will show you how to make your own in order to augment any laser on the market.
The Longer B1 laser is exceptional, but it, too, provides no laser crosshair, so I decided to add one. In the end, what was already a great product became even better with this new upgrade.
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Thank you, I upgraded to a Ray5 20w. In the enclosure I’m using trying to get projects aligned is difficult at best. This is a game changer for me. Thanks again
Blair it was useful.
great idea,works like a charm.
Glad it helped
Just the tutorial i was looking for! Clearly explained and Worked great 👍
Glad it helped!
Great content, thanks adding crosshairs laser to my Falcon 2 40w diode. THANKS!!!!
Nice!
Steve, After watching this video, I bought all the goodies and assembled the crosshair this afternoon. I mounted the battery holder with Velcro so to make battery change-out a LOT easier being able to gently remove the battery holder from the crosshair mounting board. Using "alien tape" I mounted the crosshair on the left side of the head of my Alpha 22 W, and since the Alpha's laser "beam" is ~ 1/3 back from the front of the head, my install was a mirror image with the crosshair toward the front. My final offsets were X -43.27 , Y 5.35. I measured the current draw with a new battery at ~8 mA and when you remember to turn off the battery, it should last for a fairly long time. When I cut my laser project pieces to the available board space, I find that starting at "Current Position" works best for ME. I appreciate your video that got my ars in gear to make lasering 100% easier. THANK YOU....
Glad this worked for you.
Whether you use absolute or current positioning depends a bit on the laser. Some manufacturers support these mode better than others. But you are using absolute positioning, the cross helps with determining if your design will end up in the right place on the material. Current positioning is better for trying to use small areas on material that you have previously used for another project (i.e it's full of holes that you want to work around)
Thank you very much for this very thorough explanation. I followed it and my laser's crosshair is perfectly dialed in.
Glad it helped
What a great idea, Steve! I've made my own version for Sculpfun S9 based on your idea and it makes engraving much easier and more precise. Now, I always know where to move the laser to get perfect results. Many thanks.
Fantastic!
Thank you Steve for a great idea. I have the habit of always trying to use what I already have in my shop so this is what I came up with. I used a Harbor Freight pointer and made an "L" bracket with an old license plate bolted on to the top of the laser unit. (Would send a pic if I could). It works wonderful. It is not as nice as your crosshair unit but it is still quite useful. Don't know how I lived without this great tool. Thanks again.
Well if it works, then you're a winner😀
Thank you for so much this hint! I improved my Longer B1 with that - that made positioning so much easier for me, cost only a few bucks and takes some minutes to measure - wow!
Since i have no 3D printer, i made the frame for the crosshair laser out of 3,5mm plywood.
This works incredibly well, especially on small or/and round pieces. I fixed the focus screw on the crosshair laser on the right position - letting this loose would move the beam.
So happy this was useful to you 😁
Another great tip! Funny, I was just thinking about how to add one of these to my laser but I didn’t know about the laser offset feature in lightburn. Thanks Steve!
You are so welcome!
I approve this video.. 😉. I will eventually make one of these. Thanks!
Shoot me an email. Since you inspired this, I’ll send you the design files 😁
Thanks for the idea for the laser cross hair. I slightly changed your design for my laser falcon 2. I put the laser cross hairs on the right side of the laser head, but I put the battery holder on the front, since the right side had the vent holes. It really helps with start ups. Thanks
Nice work! By all means design or redesign to create whatever works for you
Thanks Steve, this is awesome! I was almost ready to duct tape a dollar store laser pointer onto the side of my laser module. ;) This will be a much more elegant solution.
Glad I could help!
Fantastic item to have
Cheap and easy to build and saves tons of time and material
OMG why hasnt someone thought of this before ! Great idea Steve, what a game changer. Spent an hour or so on FreeCAD and then printed a great little bracket to fit onto my Atomstack P7 M40 and it works a treat. Many thanks
Glad it was helpful!
Great idea Steve, that's exactly what I did 1 month ago with my Ortur 10 Watt, 100% the same :-). My idea came after a video from the Ikier Laser. Sorry for my google english
Good stuff! I love when innovation is driven by a real problem😀.
Thanks for the video!
You're welcome!
Thank you!
You're welcome! I hope it is useful
Seus vídeos são excelentes meu amigo. Gratidão 🙏🏻
Thank you!😁
After forgetting to turn off the battery for ~ 15 minutes and the crosshair died, I figured it was time for a USB 5 volt power source for the crosshair. Since the crosshair laser draws only ~ 20mA, a pot could do the job with a calculated .1 watt current that most pots can handle. FYI - a 500 ohm pot gives a good range with an added toggle switch for the deluxe model, does a great job of turning down the crosshairs to just barely visible to full on. Thank you MakerCase for a quick box to mount the pot and toggle switch if needed. I found that when you are able to dial down the crosshair intensity, it is much easier to view when you are lining up your job. This may be old news, but, using the crosshair is great for custom positioning, but, remember to TURN OFF the crosshair offset if you were to cut in "Absolute Coordinates". This fact is now in brain storage for future use 🙂
Yes this is a great idea for dedicated use on a single laser. You can usually find a 5V supply on any laser. Sounds like a topic for another video 🤔
@@SteveMakesEverythingThe crosshair laser is powered by a wire connected to a USB "A" port 5 volt output on my extension cord box with the crosshair laser wire dressed in the control/air line bundle that moves with the head. I have to say again, using a 500 ohm pot to dim the crosshair is, for me, a necessity as the dimmed laser output is *VERY* easy to see in reference to your alignment point and not be overwhelmed by the full brightness of the crosshairs....
@@ainttakenanyshit I'm actually surprise d that a simple pot dims the crosshair. The light comes from the voltage drop across the diode and that should be constant, even with a pot in there.
@@SteveMakesEverything A standard LED needs an inline current limiting resistor of about 330 ohms to around 470 ohms - depending on the source voltage to limit the current to the spec of the LED, usually 15 to 25 mA. Since the crosshair laser consumes only ~20 mA = ~.1 watts, a typical pot, (500 ohms), that is rated around .25 watts can handle the current/wattage of the LED - laser crosshair. What you are accomplishing by feeding the LED with an additional 500 ohm pot is series, is further limiting the current draw of the LED which also will dim the light output, (a REAL light output dimming).... For larger current devices a PWM - Pulsed Width Modulation Controller varies the duty cycle, (variable square wave - 0 to 5 volts), of the 5 volt output making an LED *appear* brighter with a long(er) ON time and a dimmer output - as perceived by the eyes by a shorter ON time. The light output is really the same, but, it only appears dimmer by the eyes seeing a shorter on time pulse of the 5 volt LED input voltage. Put an inline 500 ohm pot in series and you will definitely appreciate the "easier to see" crosshair. 🙂
Excellent!!! Thanks for the video. I have been wondering if I could something like this, especially for those pieces I have to make that are a bit larger than my Longer 10 watt can handle.
Glad this was useful
Great idea. I'm surprised there aren't already aftermarket products like this on sale. I would only add that it would probably be good to glue that laser into the mount so it doesn't accidentally get out of position if you bump it or just from the laser gantry moving around.
Yep, you can glue it, though it will sit there just fine. It’s just a general guide rather than a precision instrument. So if it does move it’s not really critical.
Really great video I have installed it as you showed and it worked perfect, just one problem I found after an hour trying to set up my rotary is that it does not work with my Ortur chuck rotary. Maybe I doing something wrong but in the end I had to turn the feature off while using the rotary. Thanks for a great idea.
There are two main cable configurations that stepper motors use and most rotaries come with either both cables on and adapter to turn one into the other. If you plug it in and it does rotate then you probably need to switch cables.
Me Again I think I found my problem, next time I use my rotary I will check this. What I noticed is that the offset does not apply when you frame but it applies when I burn, therefore I was thinking the offset was not working because I was using the frame button. Hope this helps.
@@user-ng2yz9ml6t Rotaries are kind of special beasts. The Y axis is essentially rolled up into a tube around your object and that complicates things like offsets because there is no reference to understand where the offset is from.
In general with rotaries, you just move the laser where you want to start engraving and go. I probably should have picked up the rotary reference from your original post, but it didn't click in my brain.
If you put 2 cross hairs, one either side of the laser beam angled in towards each other so they combined at focal length. Then you could combine two functions in one 😅 and cross hairs would actually be true to laser position no offsets required.
It's a nice idea, but to get an angle on the beam from both sides that would cross in the middle under the shield, the red crosshair lasers would need to stick out quite far from the diode laser module.
Great solution. Is the laser holder file available?
Currently available to members. Maybe I should put it up on Etsy for non-members
Hi Steve, i have bought the parts and your design off Etsy, really nice idea and well made but i have a question, once you have followed all instructions and set the offset etc etc, does this change if you change the height of the laser and need to be reset each time or is it a once off thing ?? thanks for your great work... W.
It should be a one-time only thing. The Z position won’t impact the X/y position of the beam.
OK, See if you can figure this out. I added the external laser. It works if lets say I make a new file add some text, the text will appear with a green square in the lower left. Now wherever I place the laser the text will burn. But if I import something the green square will be gone. I can no use the external laser, the laser goes willy nilly anywhere it wishes.
Well given that the laser crosshair is completely detached from the laser, it can't be causing this (you could turn it off, and you'll be getting the same problem). It has to be related to Lightburn settings in your project. Without seeing your project and/or a video of the problem, I couldn't really guess what the issue is.
On a project with this green square, I would turn off all other layers and look at the settings for the green layer. Also, look to see if the square is selectable, and if so, just delete it.
Hello. I love following you. 🙏🙏 I bought xtool d1 pro 20w laser. It's a very good machine, but when I say go home, it comes to the left side and then goes to the back and makes a lot of noise and stops after 10 seconds. So at the end he still wants to go forward😊. As a newbie to this request, I could not solve this problem. I would appreciate it if you would recommend an instructional video. Thanks. Hello from Turkey. 🙏🤘💪
This sound like a setup issue. On the D1Pro home I’d in the upper right by default, but you can mess that up by trying to override it in lightburn. Let me know if you can’t figure it out and I’ll try it on mine. My D1Pro almost never does absolute positioning because it spends a lot of time engraving my company logo into things.
@@SteveMakesEverything 😊 Thankyou. 🙏🙏
Just so I understand the process, to use your cross hair approach you cannot use Absolute coordinates (as I'm used to) but instead use current position. I have the Longer Ray5 10W laser. Presently I use absolute coordinates, make sure my laser is at the extreme bottom left and then power up thus setting my origin (I don't have homing microswitches). That being the case (after the laser is set up with the pointer) do I still follow my standard absolute startup procedure, then move the laser head (electronically of course) so that the cross hair is at the point I desire, and then change my setting to current position for the remainder of my work?
Nothing with this crosshair will prevent absolute coordinate usage - this is what I use for almost every job. However, if you are using absolute coordinates, then any crosshair would only be a confirmation of positioning anyway. But this is a mode that I often operate in, and I move the material to suit the job rather than trying to frame the laser onto the right place on the material. The crosshair helps with this.
Great idea. I have a problem though. I don't yet have the crosshair laser to apply but I decided to improvise by aligning the front right corner (facing the front of the laserhead) and measuring from there. I get offset measurements of X: 37.00mm and Y: -32.00mm. My problem is it Frames fine but when fired it produces a console Alarm:2 G-code motion target exceeds machine travel . . .
If I have any negative value for Y it does this but not if the value is 0 or any positive number. I have the Longer B1 30 watt and using Lightburn v1.4. using the GRBL (not M3) driver.
There might be a simple solution. Use the front left corner instead. I think you're running too close to the left edge of the laser. If you are hitting issues with the Y, then switch from the front to the back.
When you use laser offset you are effectively shift the workspace. So if you place an image at 0,0 on the workspace but your offset is 20,0 then you will be 20mm further left than your laser can go.
@SteveMakesEverything all said and done I am using the same laser and software you used in this video. Strange I am encountering this. Nonetheless in the meantime I'll try the left until I acquire the crosshair hardware. Just hope I'm not forced to mount it on the left.
@@RobertNewsome You can certainly mount a sight or reference whatever corner of the laser you want as long as you understand that you can't get something for free.
If you are referencing the right side of the module, then you need to account for about half the width of the laser module, which means you will lose workspace real estate because you are, in effect, moving the place where x=0 to the right by an amount equal to the x component of your laser offset value. Same applies for the Y axis
Nice video Steve, I used your links to purchase battery pack and laser from amazon. How does one make the cross line appear? mine came in with only one line but does focus. Thanks for your time.
The laser should create the crosshair on its own. There are two different lasers: A line and a cross hair
Oh no, I apparently screwed up big-time and linked the wrong laser module. I’ll post to correct one tomorrow. Very sorry for this ☹️
I know I'm being a pain and after this I won't bother you with anymore questions. I went to Lightburn's online help but the only thing related to center-out engraving had to do with the rotary tool. Can you provide a link to anything that will explain it. I even Googled it and got squat.
In Lightburn go to the Laser tab and pick the center button in the job origin block.
Any chance of posting the print file? I've got the laser but just ordered the battery holder. Thanks Again!
I created an Etsy listing for this if you don't want to become a channel member: www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1513647458/diode-laser-crosshair-svg-svg-svg?click_key=fda6ed67405a93e664d6429109e5d54c8d71a415%3A1513647458&click_sum=1e5cc6bc&ref=shop_home_active_1
Thank you for your response. A Further question. I've got your setup mounted on my Ray5 10w laser. I'm going through the offset procedure. When I enter a negative number (i.e. the -Y requirement). I get an out of boundaries error. It will also give me that error if I enter a -X value. I believe It thinks that it's origin is where it is presently due to the "current location" setting (and that its at the Laser's extreme mechanical boundary location). By giving a negative value to the offset the laser/Lightburn is "thinking" that is below zero and is beyond where the laser head may go.) I've compared your settings with mine and can find no discrepancy
Yes it’s possible to go negative and run into an error depending on the laser. The easiest solution is to place the red crosshair on the front left side of the laser module instead of the right, but then you can run into collisions during homing so you’ll need to play with it a bit to find the best location
if I do that the X value will change but the Y value will still have to be negative.@@SteveMakesEverything
@@RichardGreene-qq3hr You can move the site more to the front or rear of the laser module. Positioning in front of the nozzle and vs behind it will determine if you are positive or negative.
This is arguably a bug in Lightburn. It should adjust the workspace location based on the pointer offset rather than assuming 0,0 is at the physical home location. CNC machines have handled this behavior forever.
OK I got it to work. There are one of two options. 1. Before you turn on the laser but after Lightburn has loaded set start from to Absolute and make sure that the laser is sitting at location 0,0 (for me thats in the lower left corner). Now turn on the laser. This fixes the machine origin at (0,0). Now switch start from to "Current Position". Using Lightburn move the Laser to the position you want to start your engraving at. Now go through the calibration procedure and you will get no errors with negative Y values. 2. If you power up the laser with its head anywhere other than at the hardware origin, set Lightburn to absolute coordinates before the power up, click on "move" and set "move to position" to x-0. y=0 and click go. At this point the laser should be at the 0,0 origin. Now click on "set origin". Using Lightburn move the laser to the location you want to engrave and do your calibration procedure Again since the hardware origin has been set you can enter a negative number for Y and not get an error. From then on operate as you normally would. If you follow this procedure even though you are set to "current position" Frame will work as it should (as it does in Absolute coordinates ") as will the different laser movement options. The hard origin setting at 0,0 is the key.@@SteveMakesEverything
@@RichardGreene-qq3hr Sound a bit complicated, but we do whatever works 🙃
Do you have a link to the laser module you used?
Look in the video description
The laser module linked to on Amazon is aline not a cross pattern - did you post the wrong link or did Amazon change it???
I’ll take a look. There might be an option to select crosshair but I’ll fix the link
I made a version of the holder for holding the battery case and pointer for my 3D printer. If anyone is interested I uploaded the 3mf and STL files to Printables
I originally ally did it this way too, but I figure that a tool for a laser should be built with a laser 😁
Hi Steve, I have a creality laser falcon 2 22w, can you make a video for how to square a laser frame perfectly?
It's pretty hard for the frame to be out of square. Are you having an issue with this?
@@SteveMakesEverything yes I never seem to get a "closed" square, 20x20mm
@@alexandermagnussen4883 Hmm, not sure that a squaring issue. Email me a photo so I can have a look
I've set up my Longer Ray 5 10W laser with the cross hair laser alignment tool you've shown and using the technique shown here got a perfect placement of the test rectangle. I've then created engravings and the setup worked fine. My problem is I then went to one of my older Lightburn files (engraving name tag cards) the repositioning is way off. This was originally created using Absolute Coordinates. I switch to Current Position with this file and turned on Enabler Pointer Offset with the values I derived during pointer laser setup. The resulting engraving is nowhere near the correct position. It does offset the engraving but not to the correct position. Is there some other setting I need to adjust/change on previously designed files that I'm missing? Do I need to set the old files origin?
The presence of a pointer, or pointer offset value shouldn't impact this, so there must be something else going on. You definitely want to be using absolute coordinates, but once you load the project, mkae sure that the pointer offset is still turned on and set to the right value.
Thanks for the quick reply. I found the problem. It relates to the Job Origin (The little green square.). If you have a number of engraving designs in a specific file, to just engrave one of them I check the "Cut Selected Graphics" box and then high lite/select the graphic I want to engrave. I thought that the job origin indicator (Green Box) would then move to the lower left corner of the selected graphic. What I found was that that is not the case. Irrespective of what you have selected the job origin fixes itself to the furthest lower left of the entire design. The distance between the job origin and the "selected" graphic causes an additional offset which is added to the offset you programed into "Enable Pointer Offset", hence further shifting the engraving. In my design I have a wood edge bounding box using Layer T1 to show me where I can place my design (within the wood I'm engraving) when in" Absolute".. Its lower left corner is below and to the left of the actual selected design (by definition). When setting "Current Position" even though the T1 is a non-printing layer, its corner becomes the Job Origin. Once I turned that layer off the Job Origin (Green Box) moved to the high lited design and it then engraved as per the Laser Cross Hair! Today I learned one of the idiosyncrasies of Light Burn. Again thank you for your fast reply! A quick question .. how long can you leave your laser cross hair on before its battery discharges?@@SteveMakesEverything
@@RichardGreene-qq3hr If you turn the crosshair off when not in use, the battery should last quite a while. The CR2032 battery is a pretty cheap device at any rate.
Where can I buy the finished product?
I don't really sell a finished product because if you need this for your laser, then presumably you have the tools to make one on your own.
Will it work on the TTS-20
Yes, this should work on any laser
I got caught big time; set up a test and calibration. And then went to do a job, Went down a rabbit hole. Long story short is that; with the Older and Current version of Lightburn 1.4.04 the FRAME function does not recognize the Offset values. Can only assume that Lightburn may implement a fix or a workaround.
And when using a it would disable the Offset, or some work around.
PS. I now have it working and assist with working with my camera.
Provided feedback to Lightburn.
Due to the Red DOT pointer being after market and a distance of 30mm offset, (X and Y) and a dark shield, any laser firing is hard to see/align. Thus the external one is great. I assumed that when framing the offset would be included in the code. And thus the frame highlighted by the external pointer is where the Laser would be working. However it took some time to realize that Start and Frame appear to have no Direct relationship and thus the Frame does not actually reflect the real Laser focus point.
I’m not sure if this is a bug or a feature. Regardless of the pointer offset, the laser still has the same physical limits so I assume this is why Lightburn doesn’t account for offset when framing. However if you do frame, the point will show the proper location where engraving will happen.
Yes but run a frame and the head moves based on where it is: not the jobs intended location.
I always frame to double check the size and the area on the material. Thus I frame and the area is no where I expected . In effect it is out by the offset. I do lots of small pieces or knives or other items.
A good example is set the point on a pen. Then when you frame: the frame is no where near the pen as (40mm x 32mm) offset. And for me the visual is key to having confidence that the burn etc will be correct.
I see what you saying; I just have to get my head around it.@@SteveMakesEverything
@@ffindustries752 Yes you're right. The frame would be the absolute position, and the cross would be shifted.
would you need a crosshair if you have homing limit switches?
Most lasers these days, including the Longer B1 have limit switches. That really only tells you where the edges of the workspace are though. The cross hair tells you exactly where engraving is going to take place. It's to avoid trying to guess where the laser output nozzle is sitting because it's usually buried inside the laser module.
Oh ok. Thank you. I am new. Got my first laser this week.
@@facelessfan Welcome aboard! If you need help, just shout.
@@SteveMakesEverything Thank You
Can I have the projectfile for Lightburn? so I can make the same?
I have purchased but I cant get it in to Lightburn
If you’re a channel member you can get all project files off the member site. Otherwise you can get this design for a nominal charge on Etsy. See description
@@SteveMakesEverything Thank you! I've cut it out and assembled :P now im waiting for my new laser. Creality Laser Falcon 2 22w
Probably a stupid question… just to check if the added weight of the crosslaser marker won’t affect the proper movement of the laser, especially the “light duty” ones
It could be a concern, though this design weighs only a few grams. By comparison to any design I could imagine, the laser module weigh is far more significant.
@@SteveMakesEverythingThanks Steve, but my concern was not about your design, but about the laser self
How is this different than just fire the laser and put it over the mark?
Well, you can certainly do that, but the dark glass makes this a challenge. Even without the glass issue, I firmly believe that all lasers should have some sort of cross-hair - it just makes life so much easier.
You can raise the laser housing up so you can see the laser spot, position it, then drop it down and focus it. It would be more inconvenient though.
I was thinking the same thing. Zero the laser, fire a dot, move the cross-hair over the dot, use the current position as the offset. It's a one-and-done process. All of my small jigs have two aligning dots in them. I'd never get them aligned precisely if I couldn't put the laser over a previously marked position.
@@ReallyBigTeeth yes,this is an easy method. In the end, do what works for you.
For Lightburn there is an even easier way that will work on all but a very few diodes in which case the cross hair will work. There is a frame function in Lightburn that can be turned on and fire the laser at a very low power, Edit-Device Settings turn on Enable laser fire button and Laser on when Framing, This will not only show the start position but outline the entire job so you can check it is wholly withing the material.
Chris that works well for some diode lasers, but now many of them have the laser beam so well protected (hidden) that it's not practical to use the Fire button to precisely position the beam.
@@stephen_LaserLuster That was a day 1 problem for me, I just changed my workflow to Frame first focus second, so I have the module raised 20-30mm to frame then when done drop it and focus.
Yes you can do this easily on some lasers - mostly older ones. Newer laser are using darker highly reflect windows which make it hard to see
@@SteveMakesEverything did you see my answer to @stephendougherty4978 ?
Bad advice
Well I added the laser and followed your instructions but I'm still at a loss of what to do, I must be stupid.
Well I doubt that. Where are you stuck?
I believe I got it now, except how do I accurately position it? Let's say if I put down a coaster, and I want to put a circle just inside the circumference, the green square will be off the coaster. On the honeycomb, no way to position it. The same with a small tag and putting text on it, what am I missing here?@@SteveMakesEverything
@@owenauer3406 Ah that's a different problem. The best way to do this is to find the exact center of the coaster and then turn on center engraving and place your crosshair on the center mark of the coaster.
If you don't know how to do center-out engraving, check the online lightburn docs.
En attente de connexion...
ok
[VER:1.1h.20230903:]
[OPT:V,15,128]
Target buffer size found
ok
ok
ok
This is my problem I don’t know why someone can help me ? 😢
Hmm, that's interesting, but doesn't have anything specific to do with the laser crosshair.
This looks like an issue when you power up the laser. Is that correct?
xtool has it built in
Yes indeed. It and the Atezr L2 are kind of unique
I bet your thumb was throbbing with nasty looking that injury
It wasn’t so painful but it took a long time to grow out
👍
Steve, you certainly do a bang-up job of presenting great tips on the use of your lasers. As you only need one crosshair laser, the four pack was just twice the price - gotta have spares.. I have the Alpha 22 watt machine and as the laser head has the two fan openings on the top sides, would mounting the crosshair on the "front" of the head- facing the front of the machine? Is there a "preferred" location? There was some talk of LB having issues with a negative offset value if I remember correctly, and, I did just upgrade LB to the 1.5.04 revision. So, with a "front mount" crosshair, the "X" offset will be zero or darn close with the "Y" offset being negative? Do you think this front mount will be a problem? Thank you for taking the TIME to produce your videos and your "work" ,(FUN), helps us newbies get up to speed in proficiency of this GREAT hobby of laser cutting/engraving.... 🙂 Hank (just now subscribed)....P.S. Since the crosshair is only used during positioning, the battery life should not be an issue? How often do you change out the CR2032? Thank you again....
The best mounting position is the side so you can get the Y offset line up with the laser nozzle. If you mount it on the front the crosshair mount will probably hit the front rail of the laser.
@@SteveMakesEverythingThank you for your reply. From the heads left side to the left rail measures ~ 2 inches which should be enough room and from what you said, the left side with the crosshair being even with the "Y" axis is preferred? I do appreciate your sharing your experience. P.S. I believe the Alpha's focal length is fairly lower-farther away with that the 3mm Basswood that is normally used with the laser beam still converging. I am going to run some LB test panels with the focus being set with TWO thicknesses of the 3mm Basswood and this can be verified by burning/measuring some test fingers/kerf tests. I'll keep you posted of my results.
Another better and more reliable and accurate way to accomplish this is to ad a camera. Using Lightburn.. Let say I am engraving a name on a Number 2 pencil. Pretty small object! My first burn does not penetrate the paint. I pick up the pencil to inspect because the engraving was light. I place the pencil back on the surface update my. Camera in Lightburn drag the image to the pencil and burn again.
I don’t think a camera can give sub-millimeter accuracy to re-engrave reliably, and it would cost quite a bit more than the $15 it costs to make this laser crosshair. However a camera can achieve similar goals and can also do additional things beyond the scope of this project. I plan to look at some of these in a future video.