The Laser Flying Head.

This  is the start of the flying  head, it will eventually hold the ZNSE lens and have a compressed air supply connected and blowing out the bottom.

This post is the first stages of its construction. I'm learning a few things on this bit, threading on the lathe for one. Also Squashing the adjustable mirror mount on to the top of the 30mm square bar was interesting.

The image above shows the square bar drilled out to 20mm dia and the sliding tube to allow vertical focal point adjustment for cutting materials of different thicknesses. Or in my case, I'm not sure where the cutting surface is at all!

 The above pics show the end of the square bar chopped and flycut to a nice 45 degrees. The area of metal left is where the 5 elements of the adjustable mount had to fit. One trick which allowed this to squeeze in there was the spring fixings. A piece of M3 threaded rod is wound into the spring, obviously the handedness of the spring is important here. It really grips tight as it is under tension all the time.

So I drilled and tapped the locations in the body of the head and it was possible just to screw the springs in nice and neatly.

 

The rest of the mirror mount here is just as I've described in a previous post. One mistake I made in my marking out of these adjustable mounts is that the position is based on the front surface of the mirror that will be proud of the mount. Not the mount plate or the supporting bracket...

But luckily I went with 25mm mirrors so that should be enough room to allow for that mess up.

There will be a continuation of this part in a while. In the mean time I'm on to the laser tube mount.