How good/bad/useful are laser pointers for Zeroing?

[sailfl]

David,

That is the one I bought and it works great.

[dhunt]

That is the one I bought -and it works great.

I stopped thru at my friend's workshop while on the way to work this morning
and took a few quick photos. See attachments below.

He's been using this $4 laser for a few months now
solidly mounted on a lil right-angle bracket on the Y-car
(see the second pic) -and it seems to be working just fine.

Geez, at $4 a pop, you order 3 of them - one to use right away,
and keep the other two for when the first one dies!

He tells me they came in from China direct
with China stamps on the package he picked up from the local Post Office
and shipping was free! Beat that.

[kbraat]

I have mine set and installed on the machine as three lasers - vertical line, horizontal line and the cross hair. Idea was to help line up the corner with the horizontal and vertical lines and use the cross hair to align with a feature.

I still have to set up the offsets to get the scenario complete, but the $4 lasers have a twist focus adjust, but seem to spin with the machines movement. I may have to replace the internal spring with a stronger one to get them to hold properly (or a dab of hot melt to allow for future adjustments). The location of the cross hair intersection stays true from the initial experiments, but the 'lines' rotate (+ to X and anywhere in between).

I mounted mine to the side of the gantry with a scrap of HDPE or Delrin. Wired in a nice control project box with an on/off switch and some AAA batteries.

[bob_s]

I spent the money on a laser center/edge finder unit with the cross hair, from SDA. it isn't cheap, but the accuracy is impressive. the polarizer on it allows you to cut the dot size down to a few thousandths, way better than my $8 Chinese made laser. The first unit I received did not focus correctly, but they replaced it in 3 days with one that is perfect. It paid for itself on the first job where I needed to get an exact re-alignment with a partially cut part.

[paul_z]

You can focus the laser shown at http://www.dealextreme.com/p/red-las...-16mm-5mw-5942; however, be aware that the focus is achieved by rotating the front lens (light output) part of the barrel. This rotates the crosshairs as well. It makes mounting it a bit awkward. Still, as a relatively crude offset zeroing device it's not bad. It's probably good to + 0.020" and it provides a warm feeling that things will be cut properly.
The focus causes one other issue - where to fix the focus. I focus mine on the bed, not on the top of the material. After a few resurfacings of the bed, I need to refocus and compute a new offset.
I think I'm going to modify mine to have a switchable intensity. At high intensity, the human eye gets saturated and it is almost impossible to determine the exact location of the beam. At low intensity, the visible part of the crosshair does not extend more than a couple of inches.
Paul Z

[dhunt]

You can focus the laser shown at http://www.dealextreme.com/p/red-las...-16mm-5mw-5942;
however, be aware that the focus is achieved by rotating the front lens (light output) part of the barrel.

This rotates the crosshairs as well. It makes mounting it a bit awkward.
Still, as a relatively crude offset zeroing device it's not bad.
It's probably good to + 0.020" and it provides a warm feeling that things will be cut properly.

The focus causes one other issue - where to fix the focus.
I focus mine on the bed, not on the top of the material.
After a few resurfacings of the bed, I need to refocus and compute a new offset.

I think I'm going to modify mine to have a switchable intensity.
At high intensity, the human eye gets saturated and it is almost impossible to determine the exact location of the beam.
At low intensity, the visible part of the crosshair does not extend more than a couple of inches.

Will bear all that in mind!

The Boss has ordered 6 of them! ..some with points, some with crosshairs.
We'll be using them one at a time of course...
Multiples were ordered because Barbados is a long way away from China,
and keeping spares in stock is a good idea
plus.. at $4 each, this approach is within anyone's financial means.

Accurate to 20 thou is all we need, really.
It's just to help get close to where the action will be, in less time
and besides, it's cool as hell -and impresses visitors to our workshop.

[paul_z]

My post somehow deleted an underline. It was supposed to read + or - 0.020". Still, it's very useful and I do agree that it impresses visitors.

Paul Z

[Coleman Becker]

my boss bought a lazer cross hair for a drill press at a wood working show we mounted it to the spindle and aimed it it works brilliantly
we had to use a different band clamp but it works great we use it because we do a lot of different projects

http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/208...ttachment.aspx

[knight_toolworks]

that looks like it would fall apart with so much vibration.

[dhunt]

my boss bought a lazer cross hair for a drill press at a wood working show
we mounted it to the spindle and aimed it it works brilliantly
we had to use a different band clamp but it works great
we use it because we do a lot of different projects

http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/208...ttachment.aspx

I'm assuming the two little red things out on the corners -are two lasers?
Why two? -helpful to have two?


How long has this $40 item been in use? I'm assessing long-term durability..

I agree with the other poster that, mounted directly to router/spindle
it must suffer some considerable vibration...