![]() ![]() ![]() On top of that, you can also use the camera itself to measure the uniformity of the laser beam. You can rotate the laser, for example do 4 measurements, with 90 degrees rotated each time to check for aberrations in the laser beam. Or, as some popular saying: “Trust but verify”. Posted in Laser Hacks, Tool Hacks Tagged CCD, cnc, flatness, gantry, image sensor, laser, linear bearing, micron, surface Post navigation But now knows just where to scrape and shim the surface and by how much, which is a whole lot better than guessing. Despite some wobblies in the laser beam thanks to its auto-leveling mechanism, he was able to scan the entire length of the beam, which looks like it’s more than a meter long, and measure the flatness with a resolution of a couple of microns. The location of the peak on the sensor is recorded at various points along the surface, leading to a map of the microscopic hills and valleys along the beam.Īs seen in the video after the break, ’s results from such a quick-and-dirty setup are impressive. On a laptop, images of the beam are converted into an intensity profile whose peak is located by a Gaussian curve fit. A cheap laser level is set up to skim over the top of the beam and shine across the camera’s image sensor. To measure the microscopic hills and valleys over the length of the beam, mounted a lens-less webcam to a block of metal. The gantry arm is built from steel tubing, a commodity product with plenty of dimensional variability. At least that’s what came up with to help him assess the flatness of the gantry he fabricated for a large CNC machine he’s working on. ![]() But what if you want to know how flat something is? Is there something other than a straightedge and an eyeball for assessing the flatness of a surface?Īs it turns out, there is: a $15 webcam and a cheap laser level will do the job, along with some homebrew software and a little bit of patience. You can start with a tape measure, move up to calipers if you need more precision, or maybe even a micrometer if it’s a really critical dimension. When you want to measure the length, breadth, or depth of an object, there are plenty of instruments for the job. ![]()
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