Laser focussing template script

I finally installed my laser cutter - it works!

Long story short it was 4 day effort done in 8 months - inspiration took time to adapt a ‘part’ to another right and now is time to focus the laser.

Focusing a laser can be tedious and dangerous. You vary the Z of your laser until your lens focus is right… That could be .1mm or 0.01mm depending on your quantum definition of ‘fine’ - 552 nm wavelength being the finest step - i leave the precision to you.

Since a few minutes couldn’t yield a so gracious laser focus template to do so, i made a template maker to speed this focus process up as best as possible which would be as automatic as posible for RhinoCAM engraving strategy to process (most test simulations are under a minute with 1000mm/s feeds) and one that allows in 3 steps to get to the .001 fine measurement you need. You start with centimeter increments, mm then, and micrometers at the end. If you want finer, no problem. I put in fraction makers (in case your imperial 12 or 16 comes in flavor) but any slider precision will do if you want to adapt the fine tuning.

It still feels like kind of brute force and assumes you dont have an automated sensor for laser focus device feedback (your table at dpi sensor/value) which could speed this even more kind of technology) but given my means this is as fast as i can think of it, Yeah, power output, passes, focus/area variances, there’s room for focus power inputs here and getting them optimized as fast as possible. Any ideas here are welcome in terms of detecting focus/burn variance as a ‘signal’ to change Z , PWM or focus rotational values. This is new but im not scared to learn or focus on to improve the ‘machine’ i’ve built so far.

FYI, for the text rendering module in this Grasshopper scripts, Im using a custom module to render text called “text by curve” which is a “Peacock” module for Grasshopper (best text module i’ve seen - the others are just plain-useless in comparison if you want any typography options in your models.)

Next options might be PWM GCode rendering for gray levels for example (which means g code rendering right out of GH or using Lightburn options (fixed Z as far as i know butwith PWM levels (laser ouput power) ) i think i can do that in GH right? I have to go back and review some DarkBeetle modules i saw last year…

I can’t believe i managed to make this laser work and controllable so far. Im sure more is surely to come.

FocusZ 0.3.gh (32.1 KB)

Free to use and modify… Nothing special really - but GH makes this so easy. Hope it helps you like Grasshopper has help me!

All comments, ideas, small ads and pro-criticisms welcome. i want to do this as pro as possible. Help the planet first - optimise your power use economically… part 1 of a module for that…