Last thursday I cleaned the optics and got the resonator lasing. I dont think the internal power meter is quite working right. I couldn't get the shutter to open, eventually figured out I need the doors closed on the cabinet to do that. Friday night I managed to set a paper towel on fire. Good progress.
I brought the push wheel switches home last night to repair them. They have a little plastic arm inside that acts as a spring to return the buttons after they have been pressed. Over the last couple decades these cracked and are no longer spring like. I stuck a soft piece of rubber in its place and that seems to work fine.
I took them back over today and reinstalled them. They work pretty good now. While I was there I decided to install the cutting head back on the Z slide. When I did this I found it was grossly out of line with the center line of beam. I spent the next hour realigning everything. It looks like this was the way it was when it came from the machine builders.
Got everything tuned in pretty well. I just cant get it to stabilize to a stop. The motors just dither, real annoying. I am getting pretty close to ditching this software and moving to LinuxCNC.
For fun I decided to see what it could do, I put a coke can in there and brought it into focus and fired away, here is the damage, not bad for old flash lamps and hammered cavity optics: