Has anyone mounted a laser pointer near there spindle/router with a known offset for aligning their workpiece? Before I attempt it would be nice to know if there is a specific setup that works well.
This is an interesting idea. if you had 2 separate laser lines that crossed below the bit, that would work, but I don’t think one laser with a crosshair would work if you change the length of your bit because it would have to be incident at an angle that would change with mill length.
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I explored this idea and ended up walking away from the project. The issue is that the laser needs to be absolutely parallel to the Z axis. I just couldn’t get my laser mount to be parallel, so the crossed lines would move as the Z axis changed, or as the thickness of the stock changed. I designed a new mount with adjustment screws, but got pulled away by something else and never got back to the project.
From what I know now, I’d start by redesigning the bottom router mount to include the mount for the laser and add some adjustment screws in case things need to be fine-tuned. My original laser mount was an add-on to the router mount, which was likely the root of most of my issues. Designed as part of the router mount would eliminate some potential freedom.
If you are going down this road, surfacing the spoil board and tramming the router might be a good idea.
As Orob mentioned, consider a laser with crossed lines. I bought mine off Aliexpress.
I have experience with a laser engraver that has this feature, and it is a big help. Lightburn has built-in functionality to support this feature.
Yep, been there, done that 
It’s pretty easy. 1st step is… buy a laser. I got a crosshair style for 3 or 4 bucks on amazon. Design a mount and (in my case) glue it to the core. It needs to be fairly straight up and plum. Beyond that it doesn’t matter where you attach it. I did mine with superglue, no reason to re-print the entire core or anything.
Once you have that done wire to your board or some other way of switching it on/off. Unless you want it on all the time.
Lastly turn on your machine and set your 0’s for x/y. Put in a V bit and plunge a little hole. Your hole is 0. Jog the machine so the laser aligns with the hole (which is why you use the V bit) and make a note of where your machine is with the laser on 0.
Quick macro to jog your machine from where it is to actually being on 0 and set your x/y 0’s and you’re done.
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I did a vid on my LR3.
Did you wire it to one of th 5vdc output pins on the board? If so did you have to use a pullup resistor?
Straight to the board.
Nathan, I finally installed the laser. The install went well. The line thickness is a little thicker than desirable. Is there a more expensive laser with a narrower line?
Probably, but we’re not trying to cut a tumor off a brain, just position a router on some wood.
But there’s a pretty good chance of you move the laser closer to the material it will tighten up.
on some of those line lasers the tip is threaded so you can focus it.
I tried it and have a post for it. Didnt end up using it much. Laser lines were never crisp enough and I would “probe” the top of the workpiece anyways with the bit so it seemed like extra steps.