Makes sense. I think air pump is one of the weaknesses in my system. It’s the one delivered from the china man. But seems to work.
How can I make sure, tube is working properly ? I mean, it sends the laser beam… this is all I can see…
With a target I pulse my beam for 10mS@20%, might have to pulse it more than once for a good image of the beam. You don’t want a burnt hole just light enough to see how the tube is resonating…
If it’s state is other than TEM0, you need a new tube…
If it’s working with one lens this may not be the issue…???
Testing now a bit. The problem is now with the 3mm MDF at 15mm/s and 40%-50% power, it cuts on the left side, but not on the right. It doesn’t even scratch the bottom.
I hopeyou can see the light burn below (from left side) and the darker burn on top of it (from the right side). They are not exactly in the middle of the mirror, but they match quite well. I learned that this is more important and means the laser path is ok.
Bed is leveled and I made sure it’s the same focus as on the left (Rear right is 0.5 - 1mm higher, which I’ll fix later).
it is not sure that you have the same controller, but the settings are probably roughly the same.
Power setting is on the home page of the panel. (at my machine)
If you take the lens out of the nozzle and make a shot (pulse) in each corner of your machine bed, what does it look like?
When you have a fine test pulse mark on mirror 1, the fault can “only” lie in the frame or the nozzle’s (not) perpendicular position.
However, it is an irritating behavior from your machine, make a bigger pot of coffee and start over with troubleshooting, we follow you from the sidelines.
Thank you so much for your support and suggestions.
Short version of this reply: Everything works now (surprisingly)
What I did:
I checked laser path, mirrors and lens again. M3 was a dirty, so I cleaned it. After resampling everything again, it cut on the right front corner well, but still on right rear it didn’t cut through. Thought it was something with my laser path on the M2 short distance.
However, I tried the new 2" lens and gave 6mm focus. It cut nicely on each corner. I accidently gave 9mm focus at some point and - it cut on each corner. I tried down to 4mm and it cut again. I tried 6mm birch plywood (which gave me headache all the time) and it turned out to cut well on all corners on 5mm focus. Here some samples, with 20mm/s and 80% not even burned black:
I’m glad it’s progressing, congratulations.
BUT… what you say about your alignments is an understatement
You are not in focus at all, sorry.
The good news is, you will find out how to do it and you will be amazed at what your laser can do with the right focus.
Keep going and be patient.
For the record, this is not to tease you. But if you imagine that a laser beam has to move over 1 meter and pass 3 mirrors and a lens with a center of a few millimeters, then you realize that there is not much room for misalignment.
OK, I understand, I have to realign my laser path so the beams look like from Jack.
Have to find out how. Watched many video clips and know the idea behind. But always I can either get one beam in the middle or both aligned somewhere. So there must be something fundamentally wrong. I will work on this when I have a full weekend to spend. For the time being, I see what happens to my cuts with the given setup.
All the mirrors on your machine are at a 45 deg angle to the beam. So an 18mm mirror in m1 or m2 has a height of 18mm but a width of about 12mm. So for these mirrors you need more accurate in the Y directions. They should all be closer, it will work much better.
We all struggled with this, none of us set it up in 2 minutes first time. I’ve modified my machine a bit, which make alignment much easier, so I can do it in about 10 or 15 minutes from nothing. Just takes a few minutes to check and do minor adjustments.
Most maintenance is just cleaning the debris off it…
What alignment procedure are you following to align the machine.?
I have bought an Always On laser pointer that starts with M3 but I couldn’t get it right as I had no idea how to align the tube at the end. I have then seen I can adjust it vertically but haven’t tried again. I actually like this idea of having the always on laser beam from M3 to M1.
Maybe you are suffering from how to properly align a laser beam…
This is a very good video. The machine is a bit different and you might not have some of the same adjustments as he does, but there is no difference in the procedure.
Most people think they can move where spots coincide, but you can’t move that, you can only make them coincide. If they are too far off you have to move the destination mirror.
Is this the one that goes from the lens tube backwards?
Yes, looks like half a bullet
Last time I have moved M2 to get it near the middle. I have seen some clips from Russ, but thanks for pointing this one out.
Best
