Another laser finder.

[tonyfoale]

editor@glue-it.com has posted his Dan Gelbart inspired laser aligner. Rather than hi-jack his post with details of mine, I'm making it a separate post.
A laser finder/aligner is an extremely useful add-on to a mill or drill press and can be used for various alignment tasks to a surprising degree of accuracy as Mr. Gelbart has shown in his video.
I took his idea and made something to suit my own needs and from materials I had to hand. There were 3 features that I wanted to incorporate, viz;
1. The ability to continue machining whist it was fitted.
2. Adjustable laser angle.
3. Adjustable focus.

Rather than write my usual verbose description, in this case I think that the pix and captions are enough to show both its construction and a particular use. Don't forget to click on the images for full size versions.


I rescued the laser from a damaged spirit level. Here we have the laser board, housing and adjustable focus lens holder.


I made a hinged clamp for rapid fitting and removal. Here are the separate pieces and assembled.


The laser is epoxied into its pivotted holder, 2 AA batteries are fitted in a drilled hole under the red cover/switch.


I wanted to be able to use this when milling so it had to be reasonably well balanced to avoid creating vibration. Firstly the balance was checked which indicated that there was too much mass concentrated near the laser end. So excess metal was milled away and an adjustable steel nut and bolt, as a counter weight, were added to the opposite side. That brought the balance to an acceptable level.


Attached to the mill spindle. The eagled eyed amongst you will note that these pix were taken before the balance was attended to.


I mentioned that a laser finder is also useful in a drill press. To that end I made a simple mandrel to hold in the chuck and provide a clamping surface for the hinged clamp.


Initial hand rotated tests gave perfect results, however once it was rotated mechanically it would reach an RPM when some of the circle would disappear. Weird yes? Anyone guess the problem? At speed the batteries would centrifuge away from one of the contacts, I forget why it didn't turn off for a whole revolution, but there was a logical explanation. The fix was simple, I just used a stronger spring in the battery compartment.

So let's see how it helped turn what would have been a tedious job, into a piece of cake.


I wanted to counter bore a number of cover screw holes, in a crankcase, to fit small O-rings to ensure a good seal. Without the laser I would have had to centre off each hole by one of several methods, all tedious. It can be seen how easy it is to centre over the hole with the laser.


Align as above and plunge to depth. Very simple and very fast. I have found countless applications for the rapid alignment that this tool enables.