Perfect Alignment Every Time - The Fiducial Alignment Ruler (design in post)

Its been a long time coming, and I have been waiting for this for years, so I am incredibly excited to share my Fiducial Alignment Ruler with you guys!

→ original concept post: (XY home position - #275 by takitus)

As most of you are aware, snapmarks were just released and are INCREDIBLY helpful in getting everything aligned perfectly. The one downside that has bothered me since the beginning, is that you ALWAYS have to make a jig for everything.

NO LONGER.
ONE JIG TO RULE THEM ALL!

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So many times Ive had a piece of scrap that was EXACTLY the right size to get a piece I needed cut out of it, as long as the lid camera was 100% accurate. We all know how that ends up half the time… the cut is off by 1/8", and to the scrap heap it goes…

Now you can just include the outline of the ruler(including the fiducials), in any design you need perfect alignment with, and what you see is what you get! (Obviously you have to use the snapmark feature to align your design with the ruler)

Here is an example design used on a very tight piece of scrap. It came out exactly as designed, and fit perfectly in the scrap piece!


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The design comes with pieces for height adjustment and 45º angle alignment

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Attach them with magnets to allow you to get the best alignment with the materials you are working with
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make some for each thickness of material, like 1/8" so you can have you ruler lay over the top of 1/8" material, and etc with each thickness.

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stack them to the depth you need!

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Here is the design of the file, and the actual file below zipped up in AI format. It was designed to fit the 8mm neodymium magnets they sell at home depot and online.


fiducial_ruler.zip (613.6 KB)

Have fun with this you guys, and post up your success stories here so we can see how its working out for you. Any feedback would be appreciated in case a V2 is necessary!

Thanks
– takitus

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Great work! Will try this out pronto. Thanks so much for sharing! You’ve obviously been thinking about this for a while… :grinning:

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That is a clever design. Thank you for sharing. :grinning:

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This ROCKS!! Brilliant! Thanks for sharing. I especially like the stacking aspect for various heights.

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Okay, so unless someone publishes a rotary indexer that can be cut and assembled in a few hours within the next few days I think you have the most valuable owner contribution sinched up for September.

I’m not sure if I have any 8mm magnets on hand but that’s not hard to fix. Deffenetly going to make one. THANX!

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Awesome! It was on my list to make one of these based on your original design. The height adjustment is very clever! I’m glad I didn’t have time yet (stupid life getting in the way of lasering), so I can make this instead!

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No problem! Happy to share! Let me know if you have any feedback. I kinda threw out the first working prototype of this.

I actually have a pretty advanced rotary too. It’s still in the testing phase however.

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Well, damn. I can’t wait to see this!

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Nice work takitus! :sunglasses: Thanks so much for the file!

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Nice! I’d been working on the same thing, but without the handy add-one. I guess I can scrap mine now and just use yours instead. :smiley:

Well, mine had a ruler on the left, too. I might have to add that in.

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Now I just need snapmarker option. Hopefully it will come to the basic machine so I can use this. This Looks extremely useful.

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Well, don’t release it into the wild this month! I’d hate to see you beat yourself out of most valuable contribution! :rofl:

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Thank you so much, this is just wonderful. Appreciate your cleverness of the design and your kindness of sharing.

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Oh, thank you @takitus! I remember your original post and was hoping for exactly this!

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Very nice and thanks so much for sharing the files and how to! I hope I can re-acquire Snapmark. I’ll definitely make one of these if I do!

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Now I just need snapmarks.

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Crossing my fingers to get Snapmarks soon!

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Thank you for sharing. Will test this out soon!

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ha yeah the original design I made had it in there too, I just got lazy :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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