My laser cutter is working perfectly. However, depending on the thickness of the material being cut, the focus of the laser lens needs to be adjusted.
This is done by turning the lens screw in front of the laser, which is both finicky and imprecise. To improve this situation, I 3D-printed a small focus-lever with a scale. First things first, my CAD design:
The lower part friction-clamps onto the focus wheel of the laser, and the green part acts as a spacer and a scale. It clips into the mounting holes of the laser heatsink.
Installation
Installing the part was pretty easy, however I had to heat the scale part with a lighter in order to squish it into the heatsink. The toleances were really tight.
The relative focal distance achieved with this system is about 4-5cm, which is plenty for my use cases.
Download
Here you can downlaod the CAD file:
- Autodesk Cloud: https://a360.co/2XBCuPh
You can find the other parts of this series here.
