Does anyone know of any laser pointers that fit into the 1/4" collet?
I’d like to come up with something that would assist with positioning an existing piece for further edits, something that doesn’t involve building piece-specific jigs, and preferably something that minimized x- and y- axis offsets…
There are a lot of laser crosshairs like these on Amazon:
Personally I just chuck up a 1/4" pin that I sharpened to a point on a lathe, in the collet for similar results.
After I read you first sentence I thought you were planning a toy for the cat.
Not sure if it will help, but one thing to keep in mind is that one can go up to 8mm (5/16") for collets in ER-11 or the Makita RT0701/0700/Carbide Compact Router:
I designed a laser mount that goes on the side of the router mount.
It has a dot and a cross. Depending on what I need
Each has their own offset to the center of the bit. Once you line the laser up you then run a Custom Action to move over by the calculated offset for that laser, then you then zero X and Y. Or at least that is what I do 
There are a couple of gotchas with these lasers above
1, The “overseas” laser suck for drifting. the focus lens moves the laser all over the place when focusing and the lens fits loose so as the machine moves the laser beam bounces around. I had to fix this in my design.
2. The laser light has a wider mark than a pointed 1/4 centering pin. The tapered pin comes to a nice fine point, a laser does not. So what you do is use the side of the light beam not the middle to be more accurate. I align off the back. right side of the dot and the cross. Yes the tapered pin is more accurate. but the laser does have some advantages
I use my machine for vinyl cutting and line art in addition to it’s main purpose I cut one, move to the right and cut another. The laser helps me quickly align/move to next spot in the material and repeat. The cross is especially nice when cutting irregular shapes
I seem to remember way back a discussion on CM maybe doing a air trace of the project. this will be cool with a laser. You can make sure it will fit in your scape pieces
Anyhow I hope that helps
You may be able to find a laser bore sight for a firearm. You could use either the .22 or .25 caliber chamber lasers. You may need to modify the case to fit in the collet and don’t tighten it but finger tight.
I’m sure you can find something cheaper on Amazon.
Anthony
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.