Laser Crosshair Pointer For Glowforge Cut Alignment. This mount uses suction cup to mount in any orientation on smooth surfaces. It holds a crosshair laser pointer to help align parts for CNC routing and or laser cutting and engraving. Work perfectly with the Glowforge laser and mounts securely on the glass cover. Laser can be powered by any external USB type battery or plug-in power source. The files to 3D print the mount are available for free at GrabCad. Search for “laser-crosshair-pointer-mount”
Hi. Can you describe how you’re using this? The pictures at the other site show the laser on the top glass and shooting down. I imagine you’re leaving the front down to position your material then closing everything up to cut?
How often are you cleaning the glass to make this work?
Thanks.
I cut or engrave a test piece like paper or some material that won’t move when cut. Without moving the test piece, I line up the laser to the cut part. Since the laser is stuck on the glass you can open the lid and just line up the actual part you want to cut or engrave using the laser crosshair. It’s easier to line up if you leave the front access door open during the alignment of the actual part you want to cut.
Hi. Can you describe how you’re using this? The pictures at the other site show the laser on the top glass and shooting down. I imagine you’re leaving the front down to position your material then closing everything up to cut?
How often are you cleaning the glass to make this work?
Thanks.
This is interesting, though there are a few potential gotchas, depending on how perfect you need your alignment to be.
If your lid doesn’t close perfectly every time, your laser alignment will be off.
The traditional way to handle this is to put down paper or tape on our crumb tray ad then cut or score a line on it. You can then physically align your pieces onto the lines on the tape. I think this will be about as accurate as your laser pointer solution, and require no extra parts or power.
Am I missing some other advantage to the laser method?
There’s lots of different ways of doing this. But when you’re trying to hit an exact spot On a part that you only have one chance to get it right I found that this works really well and is repeatable. I haven’t had any issues with my cover, closing and lining up exactly the same way every time. I use magnets to allow me to leave the front access door open so I can line things up without having to open the top cover.
Interesting. I’ll stick to jigs personally when I need this medium level of accuracy (+/- 0.02” at best I systems) because they control rotational position too.
If I need less accuracy (+/- 0.02-0.05) the score on tape method works well for me without having to break the safety features of the machine.
If I need higher accuracy than that (+/- 0.002”) a kerf adjusted jig made with more durable materials and tray boots in the way to go.
This laser idea is cool but I just don’t see how it would fit in my workflow, and I don’t want to modify my machine.
We use jigs a lot. But if we need to set up for one time part and get it right the first time, this is a good option. As an example, I needed to cut a circle out of my Otterbox phone case to embed an access control chip and i wanted to hit the spot the first time and not mess up the case. This is easy and works.
I’m sitting here asking myself why something like this isn’t already in my arsenal for the Glowforge. I asked myself that because I’ve used this very thing on Spinny CNC many times. And I have the parts already to make one. Well I have line lasers instead of a crosshair but it comes out the same.
