[blackthorn]

Hi

I have just taken delivery of my new Chinese laser cutter. It seems to work OK, but as usual the instructions are rubbish. Please cod some help with the following points.

1. it came with Corel laser 1213.02 and Laser Draw 2012.10 I have been able to use Laser Draw, But when I try to use Corel laser I get a message box stating that Corel Draw 11 is not installed. Do you have to have Corel Draw installed to use Corel Laser.

2. How far should the cutting head be from the work piece

3,. How do you check the mirror alignment

Any help one these subjects would be much appreciated

[robertk925]

blackthorn:

1. I use Laserworks (not Laserdraw), but I believe it works similarly. Corel Laser is probably a printer (laser) driver that works within Corel Draw, that opens up Laserdraw when you want to cut from within Corel Draw. If you don't have Corel Draw, then just use Laserdraw.

2. The simplest way is to setup a strip of wood or acrylic with one end propped up so that the material is at an angle (i.e. no longer parallel) to the bed, say around 10 or 20 degrees. Cut a line starting from the low side to the high side (making sure the laser nozzle doesn't hit the material on the high side!) Assuming you started cutting closer than the ideal focal distance and ended up cutting farther away from the ideal focal distance, your cut line should start wide, get narrower, then get wider again. The narrowest area is the best focal distance. Without moving anything, measure the distance from your table to the laser nozzle, and then the distance from your table to the spot where the line is narrowest (insert a strip of paper into the cut, bottom it out on the table, mark the spot with a pen, remove it, then measure the mark on the paper). Subtracting the 2 dimensions will give you the ideal focal distance from the lens nozzle to the material surface. You could also jog the laser nozzle over the narrowest spot and carefully measure from the nozzle to the material surface. Cut a small piece of acrylic to this height to use as a gauge (my machine came with one, but since the lens was installed upside down, I had to do this procedure to determine the new ideal focal distance.)

3. While this is not for your (or my) machine, I found this link helpful for aligning mirrors.
Laser Beam Alignment

-robertk925