An Optical Alignment Tool

[Rob Thule]

Thanks for adding me to the group.

Here is a tool I made some time ago which can turn out useful on the mill to locate lines and edges when regular edge finding may not be possible. Accuracy is obviously not comparable to edge finding but is good enough. It was fun and easy to put together from bits from the bin.

 

[Boswell]

Welcome to the community Rob

 

[ConValSam]

Nice project. Do you have an image of it mounted in your mill? TIA

And welcome to the forum!

 

[woodchucker]

Rob, I'm a little slow on the uptake. Can you provide more info, I'm not seeing what you are saying. is that a razor blade being shown? or is there a small hole in the part for alignment???

 

[Rob Thule]

As requested attached please find the thing mounted in the mill. To avoid confusion, at the time I had a 3 jaw lathe chuck mounted.

Essentially, (with reference to sketch) this tool consists of a slotted bar (in black) which holds a piece of Perspex (in grey) . The alignment mark (in red) was scribed on the Perspex whilst holding the bar end in the lathe chuck ensuring concentricity.

You can see the alignment mark (red circle) in the picture. You adjust the X and Y axis to align the red circle with scribed lines or punch marks.