Golf Putter Laser Sighting Mount

thingiverse

This is a device that you attach to your putter shaft near the club head that holds a commercial off the shelf laser. Once the laser is aligned with the club head, you would be amazed how it makes a difference in the ability to sink your putt. It will teach you just how much your stance and hands are off. It only helps with alignment of the club head to the hole, not with putting force. If you and your friends all have one, you can play on the course with it. If your friends don't have one, they might get mad at you. Look for my YouTube video on the Griffes Channel for assembly and calibration instructions. There are some of these on the market priced about $100; this can be printed and used with a $5 cat chasing laser, or, you can buy the gun sight lasers for $15 if you want to use it outside. This works with two lasers: 1) Innozon laser pointer chaser for cats, two for $8, and 2) WORD GX Tactical Green Hunting Rifle Scope Sight Laser Pen for $15. The cat chaser laser is said to be safe for kids. The cat chaser laser has an on/off switch, so, you mount it to the putter and when you want to use it you just turn it on. The hunting laser has a push button switch and a key lock. For the hunting laser, you mount it so that the push button switch is always depressed, then use the key lock to turn it on and off. The laser mount has five degrees of adjustments for alignment; the video describes how to calibrate the laser. It takes only a few minutes and you might be able to do it just by eye-balling. 1) Putter Shaft - the bracket for the putter shaft can rotate around the shaft. This is an artifact of the design and requires consideration. Use it to align the mount perpendicular to the putter head face. Tighten it securely. 2) Shaft Angle - to get the laser vertical to the ground, this adjustment compensates for the shaft angle to the putter head, typically about 18 degrees. 3) Vertical Sight, or Y axis - this moves the laser up and down to the target. You will want to experiment with this adjustment when you practice because when you wave the putter back and forth, it will give you the line to the hole. If it points down too much, you will have a hard time aligning with the hole. 4) Club Head Center - this allows you to get the laser beam directly over the center of your club head, usually, there is a mark on the putter for that. 5) Horizontal direction, or X axis - this moves the laser side to side. This is an important adjustment and tricky to make.See the alignment video on YouTube for instructions. I tried to make it as small and unobtrusive as possible, when I first started, it was a monster. I print in clear PLA because it goes well with chrome, but gold works nice too. At one time, I had a laser mount that used a circular level; you could use two levels, one on the club head and one on the laser mount to get a perfect match in X and Y planes. However, I found that it really didn't make that much difference in the outcome and it was bulky and expensive. I rounded the corners on the prints as much as possible because they are sharp when exactly 90 degrees. This project requires nuts and bolts for which I have attached a bill of materials. I used metric M3 hardware with hex driver heads because the M3 hardware is slightly smaller than 4-40 (washers and nuts), but 4-40 should also work (you might have to do some drilling.) The prints are fine tuned to the M3 hex head hardware with small washers. If you get the right sizes, the nuts should snap into place and the washers should slide right in (sometimes you might have to trim with a knife or drill bit or pull them into place with a screw due to the elephant-feet effect.) I tried to standardize on common M3 screw lengths, so, some pieces are larger than they need to be as to fit a common length, such as 20mm. Nothing beats a hex head screw for tightening, there is no slipping, and the stainless steel hardware never wears. And why use nuts that will loosen on their own? Its the only way to go. While working on this project, I developed a list of hole sizes for screws, washers, and nuts that I used in sketchup and verified in the 3D print. The list is attached, hope you find it useful. Total time to print all six pieces is about 4 hours. I've been wanting to make one of these for 20 years, and I did once but it was a metal monstrosity that didn't really work well. I hope you enjoy it, its a lot of fun to play with and the kids love playing with it too.