No matter what I try, I can just not seem to get my laser aligned. I believe the issue is with my 3rd mirror. The other mirrors should be fine. I’ve made a video of me trying to align the 3rd mirror and the result I get. Any help would be SO appreciated.
The video should be viewable now.
I may be thick as a brick, but the fact that it’s not cutting through a chunk of wood seems to have nothing to do with beam alignment at the third mirror.
What result are you expecting and why does that depend on the alignment?
Let’s start from the beginning.
Upload good pictures of the beam scorch on tape (or, better, paper targets) at the entrance aperture of:
Given those three pix, we can verify the beam is making it to the laser head in good order.
Then you should be able to assemble the laser head with a paper target at the lens position, center the beam on the target, install the lens & nozzle, verify the beam comes out the middle of the nozzle, and you’re done.
Start with the beam into the head and we’ll go from there.
In addition to what @ednisley writes, it could indicate that your nozzle may not be perpendicular. There have been a few posts on the subject here lately.
I can’t see if your machine bed can be raised/lowered, if so, make a test shot with a distance of a few mm to a test piece, you must not move this test piece, lower your machine bed a fair bit (min 100 mm) and shoot again . See if you get one or two points as the result. This test can be done with or without nozzle/lens.
Here are the dots on tape on each of the mirrors. I made separate burn marks far and close so you could see the quality of the dots. The close and far dots do line up when on the same tape.
It is subjective, but for me it is not 100% ok.
… have you tried sticking tape on the outlet of the nozzle? or have you done the test I recommended, to make sure your nozzle is perpendicular. Even if you only hit the inside of your nozzle a little you will miss this energy.
You do not write how much Watt you are dealing with.
Have you done a regular ramp test to find your focus?, on the video it doesn’t look optimal.
Excellent!
The Mirror 1 scorch is rather far off-center, which you can fix by moving the whole mirror mount. At this point, that’s not worth doing, but the next time you do an alignment, start by centering that one.
The beam enters the laser head off-center by enough to need fixing, which requires moving the laser head on its mounts to catch the beam in the middle of the aperture.
Do not change Mirror 1 and Mirror 2: they’re fine.
When that’s done, adjust Mirror 3 to put the beam in the middle of a paper target replacing the focus lens.
Install the lens, reassemble the nozzle, stick tape on the nozzle exit hole, and verify the beam punches through the middle of the hole.
Then run @bernd.dk’s test to verify the laser head and beam are perpendicular to the platform.
Then run a ramp test to verify the focus position.
Report back on all those steps so we can look over your shoulder …
