Laser "projector" for PCB mask creation

[mixedgas]

Looking at the auction pics, I see the three white wires are the power leads for the amp. That little daughter card is actually a breakout board, looks like it might include the IR laser and certainly includes a laser driver. The two lenses pictured probably make a reasonable first order flat field correction, taking the place of a F-Theta. My bet is that is a lens with a LD under the U shaped folded piece in the silver can. Either that or its one wierd power connector with only two wires.

The amp pictured is easy to reverse, the three VRs will be 7815, 7915, and usually a 7805 or 7808. The Apex chip is the power amp to drive the galvo. The potentiometers are labeled, I just can't make them out in those pictures. So they are probably servo gain, velocity, and damping, which is all a marker system needs.

Piece of cake from there.

Steve

[macona]

Dont worry about the beam being invisible. There are dozens of people that have built their own CO2 laser cutter and have had not problems aligning it even though the beam is invisible. I personally use small pieces of acrylic to find the beam, others use thermal paper. There are even phosphorescent sticks that glow in the beam. And once you are wearing high OD glasses for the diode you wont be seeing much of the beam anyway. I have set up and aligned lasers in both UV and IR and it is not hard.

Calling backlash something it is not does not make it right. Anyway, backlash can be compensated for, all the major CNC packages (LinuxCNC, Mach3) have backlash comp built in.

I built a little board router for a friend once. Uses pretty generic plastic nut anti-backlash leadscrews. The table is a piece of MDF that I mounted rare earth magnets under and use other magnets to hold the PCB down. It does not move, the actual cutting forces involved are very low.