Hi, my machine is a 60W red and black “OMTECH” chinese copy, with almost no upgrades or replacements performed.
When I’m burning across my work area, I notice that in a linear perspective, as my mirrors get further from each other the beam seems weaker…is this just divergence, and is there any way to mitigate this issue? I wonder if this could be solved by collimating the beam at some point throughout it’s travel from mirror two to mirror three? Or if the beam as it leaves my tube could be collimated down a few mm by getting a different tube?
I seriously thank you for that response. I’ll play around with alignment more and see if I get some positive results. The diameter of my beam is about 4.5 mm at it’s furthest extension…does that seem normal?
I also wonder if there is occlusion from the positioning of the laser head, that maybe the rail is ramping a small amount and causing another alignment issue there, but my feeble human eyes have trouble perceiving such a phenomenon, if it exists.
If you are doing a proper alignment you would know about that … IMHO…
What alignment procedure do you use?
Here is a video by Sadler that shows a proper alignment technique and explains what’s happening, I think very clearly…
His machine might allow adjustments yours doesn’t, but the theory is a good foundation…
Cut yourself out some targets for alignment, makes life much easier. I cut mine out of watercolor paper… it’s hard to see, but it has ‘cross hairs’ in the center…
I typically use acrylic for alignment…and yea, all the people’s machines being a little different is why this issue persists…I’m not convinced it’s mirror alignment, but just not having a precise track for the laser head, and being it’s my first and only laser…it’s all a big experiment.
And don’t forget bed leveling. It’s one thing to have all the mirrors aligned… but there is still the matter of getting the beam onto the target. So make sure that the bed is also level.
