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Alignment Procedure
The ProLF 24x18 laser has an integrated beam combiner which greatly simplifies beam
alignment. The general procedure is to first align the red beam with the invisible beam then
use the red beam as the primary indicator for alignment.
1.
Put a piece of thermal paper on mirror #1.
2.
Press the UNLOCK button on the laser control panel. In the unlocked state, you can
move the laser head around by hand and fire test dots using the TEST FIRE button.
3.
Close the lid and the rear access panel then press the TEST FIRE button on the laser
control panel. A black dot should appear on the mirror. Check that this dot is round
and not clipped. You may need to press the test fire button several times to get a dot.
In the unlikely case the dot is still clipped after multiple test fires, the tube may be
sitting at an angle causing it to hit the beam combiner. Adjust one of the clamps of the
laser tube to move the tube down so it is not clipped by the beam combiner. This
should not happen normally unless you changed the tube so contact FSL tech support
for more details.
4.
Move the X gantry (the long black bar) down to the lowest Y position as shown in the
following picture. Put a piece of thermal paper on location #2. Fire a test pulse and
observe where the black dot appears on the thermal paper.
5.
Without moving the gantry and without touching any of the mirrors, adjust the red
diode laser mount so that the red dot overlaps with the black dot. Do this by adjusting
the screws that hold the red laser in place.
6.
Once the red dot overlaps with the black dot, the red is travelling along the same path
as the invisible laser beam and can be used to align the rest of the laser instead of
relying on the invisible black dot.
Not Clipped
ok
Mirror
outline
Laser fire
dot
Clipped by
beam combiner
