"X" Prize - $1,000 Contest

[Doc]

+1 what Norty said

[dave]

updated with quad build in my previous post.
BTW if you want a mechanical drawing off all the parts and the layout let me know.

Unfortunately, the way you are intending on combining wont be very stable. I have a couple of reasons why, but I would rather not say here....

[Stoney3K]

What I'm curious about is the way you say 'we claim ownership of the design', yet you have no legal basis to enforce it.

If someone posts a design of a quad red here with the specs you want and you award him/her the prize, you can have no way of controlling ownership of the IP (e.g. patents) because it was posted here, publicly, before and therefore it would be prior art.

Also, it's impossible to have a degree of control over it since a lot of people on these boards are not US residents. Any 'ownership violation' would be out of jurisdiction.

So any transfer of ownership of this knowledge would be, in all senses, a gentleman's agreement. There is no way to prevent the original creator from publishing his design in the public domain so anyone can build it.

[mixedgas]

"Its just 69 dollars Papa", "You won't get 69 cents from me Rose"

Line from famous movie/musical about strippers, and Rose is a mom who is asking her dad for money to send her daughter off to a career. Rose's daughter ends up, well, doing something else.

I'm divided on this one. PL and LPF contain many, many, many people who leach off the designs of others.


I once had some one offer me money to copy the Lasorb. I know whats in a lasorb to a reasonable amount of certainty. Can I order the parts from the former cold war plant in a far, far, away place? Most likely not with my budget, no one wants to sell one offs. Nor do I speak the local language well enough to negotiate. Can I put together the packaging? No, not at hobby costs. I don't own a wire bonder. Do I fear his lawyers? YEP, YOU BETCHA!.

I'm a open critic of BB, yet have a more then a modicum of respect for him. I'm not posting at what I know, because the laser industry, not just the show industry, NEEDs Lasorb. There is little innovation without PROFIT!

So there are still people on this forum who belive there should be no secrets. Right down to wanting the source code of major laser show software. Why? They want what they do not have the resources or in most cases the talent to develop. Its greed and fantasy. I did it myself when I was very young. These folks also seem to have this undercurrent of thinking they should be able to tour with Roger Walters with 300$ worth of gear, and if they can't do it, its UNFAIR that others with more budget can.

Its OK to dream, its OK to try. However if less time was spent on wishing and moaning, more time could be spent on doing.

In reality, unless you already own the tooling and the machine shop, most of these tasks wont happen. Only one hobbyist ever published a closed loop galvo design that worked, and he spent about two years researching the problem. His design is NOT widely copied, even though its a fraction of the cost, and trivial to make. Why is it not produced? Well, the labor to do all the hand adjustments to get it working on each unit is not cost effective compared to the consistant body of a Cambridge clone. (See Note B)


Most of the people here producing new designs either have their own business, or are leaching off their job at a machine shop, university, etc.
Thats OK some times, technology has to spread. Many folks have bosses that would like to pay their employee more, but can't and don't mind if they do a little evening work.
Universities don't mind if their grad students do a little playing around, if its NOT related to the day job. Why? Because they come back with skills that are beneficial to them as students.


As far as the IP, its a BADGE of HONOR in the electrical engineering world to have your schematic posted in Electronic Design News or Electronic Design's Ideas For Design/Design Ideas pages, and all you get is 50$ or 250$ IF your schematic is published. Those schematics show up in compilations on DVD or on the internet. So many of them just will plain NOT work, if built as drawn, too. Hint, the key to this is having a day job where you get paid enough that your novel schematic is something that you can afford to give away.

The Joule Thief is a case in point. One Russian guy publishes a design to power a led off a single cell. It started a world wide trend. He got 50$ for his effort. Yet only a few sites who have copied his design (And many if not most make it worse!) give him credit for his work. )


The fellow who made a super efficient blocking oscillator with a LED clamp as a load is named Kaparnik, and I wonder some times how much he would have made if he got royalties from ever LED flashlight company that ever copied his design. On the other hand, he knows that if not carefullly implemented, it kills LEDs fast. It looks good on his resume, and in some parts of the world, it probably serves many people well who have only a few AA batteries per year for light.****

So you can either be wealthy enough to be idealistic, or you can oppose this and be capitalistic.

I have a lot of schematics and experience and some specialized parts in my basement that many PL/LPFers would give their right nut, if not their wife for. Its cost me tens of thousands of dollars over 20 years to develop that knowledge base. I feel obliged to share SOME of it, but since much of it is the collaborative work with others, those gems stay "redacted" or "trade secret" or "classified" Have you ever seen a pic of the sealing tool for the ion tubes or how to clean up tube cathodes? Nope. And you won't. Yet I share much of what I have learned. I can afford to, I'm most often employed in other areas. Laser is a low profit margin industry. Its often not worth my time to try to sell some of this stuff. Yet it was profitable for me to have it at one time.


I did quite a few laser power supply repairs in my college days. I cannot say I am without sin, as I "Social Engineered" access to a copy of the schematic for one laser. It showed up in a unmarked envelope one day. The other, competing, brand was doing so good, they just SENT a copy on request, and said "publish it", and its in the FAQ. Downside. You could have the drawings, and if you did NOT work out how to the initial adjustments, you'd blow 150$ worth of parts EVERY time until you got it right. So I had to do SOME work to get it right. Thus I am not without sin, and few others of us here are "saints" in this matter.

There may be some one out there who could use the 1000$ for the better good.

So this sort of contest is common.

What Dan forgot, is in these contests, you need to publish the winning design. That's whats missing.

Some one out there may think 1000$ is worth it. It is their choice. If that is the case, who are all of you to judge?

I personally think if you approached Dan with a technology he could reproduce and license, he'd buy it. How do I know? I tried.
Give him some benefit of the doubt. You have to seek a balence between innovation, profit, and IP rights. Its NOT easy, and it depends on which chair you set in.

There is no IP, no Magic, in any of the RED designs I've seen published here. Just much trial and error work. Just how "Novel" is a Galilean Telescope?


Steve

NOTE A:
(Note for pointer dudes, the Joule Thief's 80 volt short spikes kill Laser Diodes, forget about it, It uses the fact that LEDs have HUGE dies that act as clamps, as a key to its operation. It may work for a few hours with a blue diode, but there are MUCH better solutions. If you can afford to waste a 79$ diode, your doing better then me!. Yes, it has only 4 parts and could easily fit in a 4 mm diameter case, but without regulation, IT WILL blow your laser diode at some time, at a rate much faster then a proper driver circuit. Pay the 20-35$ for a real driver.)

[planters]

I believe Steve's comments are spot on. The solution,publish the winning design, largely solves the concerns about intellectual property rights, community enlightenment and proper recognition. Furthermore, If there is sufficient interest to generate a number of runner-up designs or proof of concept examples then publish these also and the benefits will multiply. I think this open approach better matches the philosophy of an open forum.

[X-Laser]

Gotta run off to work but quickly, yes, we were intending to make the modules available which was the crux of my statement about how the hobbyist community would benefit from a lower cost, well engineered red module.

WE had not planned on publishing the winning design because the inventor may not want it published for whatever reason. That is their decision to make, not ours I feel. I certainly would not object to it being published but I did not want to make that a stipulation on the chance that the winner may want to pursue future licensing or other arrangements. Even still, I would have to imagine that enough people would collaborate and publish their findings that it would benefit the general dialogue (per #1 in my previous post).

[mixedgas]

I believe Steve's comments are spot on. The solution,publish the winning design, largely solves the concerns about intellectual property rights, community enlightenment and proper recognition. Furthermore, If there is sufficient interest to generate a number of runner-up designs or proof of concept examples then publish these also and the benefits will multiply. I think this open approach better matches the philosophy of an open forum.

Or at least just publish who won and the beamspecs.

I cannot do it today, but I will show how to measure the beam in a standard, uniform, way on Monday or Tuesday.
I'm very upset with PLs beam definitions as a group, overall. I often see figures that are, shall we say, opticmystic.

I'm busy bidding on a new job for the next 6 months, so time is short. Church and Hiking to loose weight are more important then PL right now.
That and I need to ship two plasma tubes.

So by Tuesday evening, the tutorial will be up.

Steve

[Doc]

The way I read this: You simply wish to own the right to make these things without fear of a future claim for royaltees, however everybody else will still be free to build their own?

[Stoney3K]

The way I read this: You simply wish to own the right to make these things without fear of a future claim for royaltees, however everybody else will still be free to build their own?

That's the way I read it as well. But that also means there's no need for legal (almost threatening) mumbo-jumbo about 'ownership of rights', instead of just a (proper) unconditional usage right from the person who designed this.

Who, in turn, gets 1000 bucks and the bragging right of having his design being used in top end projectors.

[andy_con]

heres my design, feel free to copy and make as many as you want

http://www.laser-man.co.uk/projects/...ode-array.html

[logsquared]

Power: 1000-2000mW
Wavelength: between 635-640nm
Beam diameter: Less than or equal to 5mm
Divergence: Less than or equal to 1.5miliradians
Fast axis correction: 1:3 or better

First, I haven't read all the post in this thread. Sorry If Its already been said.

These specs have already been meet with the Mitsubishi 71 diodes. The beam quality is not as good as other options but the component costs is way lower.

I don't think there is any "magic set-up". In fact I can think of several different ways to achieve the desired beam specs with the 71 diodes.

To make something viable for manufacturer we would need to know your cost on components (lenses, prisms, PBS cubes, waveplates. etc). This would help in making a design that is more economical to manufacture. What is you target or max. module cost? What is the maximum size, etc?

Honestly, $1000 really doesn't come close to covering the expense needed to make a real experimental model. We are talking about 4 diodes and lenses minimum. So, just the materials are costly... not mention the time.

Really, there is no magic solution. Physics "is what it is" on the limited diodes we have to work with.

There are several here who could make your module. I'm sure of that. Maybe consider commissioning someone to build you a few prototypes? Then you have hard product to compare and see what works best for you.

just my .02

-woody

[flecom]

redacted

that post would not have been complete without that

I smiled

[steve-o]

-- nevermind--
[post deleted] I think I'll just leave this be .. it ended on a happy note :] No sense stirring the pot anymore . Have a nice day

[kiyoukan]

okay so i just thought of a way to get a cheaper quad setup to get (2W with the 300mw diodes) (4W with the 500mw diode)
Attachment 30285
Attachment 30286
So a quick explanation.
Two beams are stacked vertically before the first C-lens.
Then they are sent threw the first C-lens when the beam comes together to a point, they are then stacked horizontally very close at this point.
The C- lenses (cylindrical lenses) are still the same in the other ones.
But from what im looking at this setup uses the least amount of optics and only has 3 adjustable mirror mounts.
This will give you a beam profile of around 4.5mm wide by 4mm tall with a mrad of under 0.9
This setup does not need a cube or a wave plate.
this is good because it means you can combine 2 units and get (4W with 300mw diodes or 8W with the 500mw diode)
As always pm me for a drawing with detailed placement and distances between the optics and base plate. i used my own made heatsinks so if you would like me to make one using your hardware i can just that was a quick throw together.

[dave]

4W with 300mw diodes or 8W with the 500mw diode

Overdriving the crapper out of the diodes?

[kiyoukan]

Well not so much.
Remember that is a dual setup so a total of 8 diodes aka 2 quad builds with a wave plate and cube external.
If you read the start is says a single setup gets 2W with the 300mw diodes and with the 500mw diodes about 4W
The 300mw diodes are still being felt out but it seems they run fine at 750ma giving off around 500mw output low side.
So getting 500mw out of each 300mw diode is not that bad.
And i was told getting 1W out of the 500mw diodes as long as they were TEC cooled and not driven constantly on that it should handle it just like the 445nm diodes.

[p1t8ull]

okay so i just thought of a way to get a cheaper quad

Do you have any pictures of your setup with combining/knifing taking place inside the focus point of the correction optics, or is it all theory at this stage?

[kiyoukan]

well this will be about the third time ive taken my setup apart to rebuild.
I cut my correction optics to help lower cost.
So i decided to re do some other parts i did not like.
Tonight or monday i will have pics of it running.
Also in that time i broke the window off one of the diodes and had to de can the damn thing.
I posted it on lpf
http://laserpointerforums.com/f49/cu...ses-71286.html
http://laserpointerforums.com/f50/de...age-71241.html
So ive been having a few set backs but im very close.
I have built the dual i have yet to build the quad.
i dont have 4 diodes, i only have 2.

But seeing as before the optics you are stacking vertically i dont think there should be any problem. i think what most users are worried about is the knife edging the half corrected beams together horizontally and sending them threw the same final correction lens.

[kiyoukan]

Well x laser i have put tons of effort in to the new design.
Let me know what you think.
Kiyoukan's compact dual diode setup
114mm long, 45mm tall, 66mm wide.
(Some dont know it but I am a 3D designer)
Attachment 31182 Attachment 31183 Attachment 31184 Attachment 31185 Attachment 31186
Lens holder made by 3d reprap printer.
Drop in the holes and add tiny dap of glue to the side and done.

Beam Measurements Nearfield: 4mm x 4mm
Beam Measurements Farfield: at 14 ' is a square 8.5mm
Divergence:1.05 mRad
Diode current: 750ma
Output: 1,025mw +

The reason for a solid lens holder is that it has less of a chance for the lenses to become off angle to each other and allows for faster setup just drop the lenses in and done.
If the holder is moved closer to the diodes you get a smaller beam but larger divergence. If moved away from the diodes you will get larger beam but less divergence.

This is a image of our beam
Attachment 31103

[CDBEAM]

Well.....I decided to throw the "Terrawatt Labs" design of a dual red using the ML520G71 into the pot !!! Why not !!! I missed out on the " Golden Ticket" from the Willy Wonka contest !!!! I remain convinced that the diode holder needs to have the feature of X-Y adjustabillity....but have now migrated to a stationary collimation lens and an adjustable LD with this latest design !! The G71 Photon Flash !!!! BEAM

[X-Laser]

Hi all - just a quick update.

All of the entries are in, and I think we have a total of five we are considering (I may need to be corrected on that). As it turns out there are more variables than we had expected to judge the entries fairly and there are some significant questions about feasibility in some of the design ideas. We are actively investigating all of the entires as they each have something unique about them and just wanted to provide a status update which is to say that things are being worked on. We are also moving a little slowly due to being embroiled in moving our entire operation to a larger space and all of the attendant issues generally associated with such things.

I would like to say that the spirit in a number of these entries has been remarkable and a lot of time, talent and creativity has gone into making them. I appreciate those who have chosen to participate and beg your patience a while longer as we await some prototypes for a good 'reality check.'