Anyway, I've been looking into designing an IR focusing tube to fit in with the modular gun design that I am working on. I wanted a unit that would bolt together with a few screws and allow accurate focusing of the IR beam. I also need the design to be flexible enough to fit on different gun designs.
Here is my first attempt:
It is a 6 part assembly comprising of a lens retaining ring (red), the lens (blue),
focusing tube (grey), IR led mount and slider (green), focus screw mounting plate (purple) and focus screw retaining plate (yellow).
The plates are fastened with 2 self tapping screws which are not on the model. Also, the focusing screw is not shown.
Here is a picture of it assembled:
There is a 6mm 'bar' at the top of the tube allowing the tube to be fitted inbetween 6mm MDF sheets when using an odd number of sheets in a gun design. This could easily be increased to 12mm for even numbers of sheets, or a multiple of 9mm if sheets of that width were used. Two holes in this bar allow an M4 bolt to hold the tube in place.
I printed the whole thing this weekend, and after an aborted print caused by the plastic getting too hot due to bad thermistor connections I got this:
A view from the top of the lens tube with the LED mount above:
Here it is assembled:
From the back you can see the self tapping screws holding the focusing screw plates in place and the encapsulated head of the focusing screw:
And from the front showing the LED mount in place through the lens:
I'm more than pleased about the way it has turned out. Just need to modify my gun design to use these then I can start knocking them out!
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