Hi Folks,
after realigning the mirrors on the Chinese Goldenlaser, after we had the broken/burned lens last month, I have a bit of a peculiar thing happening.
Changing the broken lens for a new lens has not changed it either.
The beam makes the burn mark on tape fairly well dead centre on M1 & M2 all over the bed, and it sems to hit M3 in the same place too.
A nice oval or circle.
With the lens removed, the burn shape on the bed isn't the nice circle though-it's like a circle with a bit of a banana or a fingernail clipping sliver at one edge. Not much of a sliver, but noticable.
With the lens in and the air nozzle on, and the beam aligned dead centre through the air nozzle, when I do a test burn, the resulting dot is like Saturn - a blob, with a skinny mark off each end. Changing the focus doesn't change the shape- a short line with the main hole in the centre.
Rotating the mirror or lens made no difference.The direction of the line is left-right in line with the X axis.
For the most part the fatter aspect is not significant, but it means that a rectangular hole is going to be a whisker wider in one dimention than the other.
I was wondering if anyone might have any ideas on what could be contributing to this extra piece of beam?