637nm issue, normal?

[valex]

Alright, so I've had some DT40's and a green 400mw I purchased online years ago. Decided to finally go full RGB, and after reading some stuff on here, placed an order with winni at golden star. I purchased a 445 1w and a CNI OEM-D-637 500mw red.

The blue, like all 445's isn't corrected, but I was ok with that, especially for the price, and was going to do the correction later, no biggie.

However, the red was nice and expensive. And I expected that it would be a nice clean beam. They said the beam was tight (unlike some 650's I've seen). And it is, however, there seems to be a problem. There seems to be heavy artifacts. I have attached a photo, and while it's hard to see what's real and what's the camera in the photo, the "+" cross effect is very strong in real life with the red. When I feed it into the scanner, you can't tell the artifacts when it's doing sheets, etc, but you easily can see the artifacts when it's doing beam effects. I don't have the dichro's placed yet, so I don't know how it will effect in-air beam color.

Winni acknowledged that what I'm seeing isn't an anomaly, and said that I wouldn't notice while scanning (which I do when I'm doing 'hot beams' and dots in QS.

Trying to get thoughts..

[valex]

FYI, looking at that photo gives a little bit of the wrong impression. The photo doesn't show it, but there is clearly a 'dot' in the center, with the 'cross' pattern being less bright. The photo makes it look like a gradient out, which it's not. It's not as bad as this picture makes it out to be, but it's still very noticeable.

[Photonbeam]

Looks like two uncorrected 637nm laser diodes oriented 90 degrees apart combined with a polarizing beam splitter cube.

[valex]

Looks like two uncorrected 637nm laser diodes oriented 90 degrees apart combined with a polarizing beam splitter cube.

I agree. And looking inside proves that. Looks like 2 diodes and a PBS. My question is, without making my own module, is this as good as I am going to get for ~1k dollars? Am I kidding myself I thinking I would be able to get an amazing profile. 537nm at 500mw for 1k?

[Solarfire]

What is the distance between laser and the projection surface? It can get much better than what you have got, especially for 1k. I just built 2 quads (beam corrected) outputting >1300mW for less than 500€ with a much better beam profile even when camera saturation is taken into account.

[valex]

Distance is roughly 20-25 feet.

Again, I realize I can do the DIY method, and have in the past, but I was looking for a 'module', so to speak, for this build.

[valex]

no other thoughts?

[edison]

From the looks of it they are 2 mitsubishi diodes combined with a PBS. There is optic correction but they didn,t do that right. It can be much better.
I would say FL 4 lenses with 2 prisms set at brewster angle or someting likle that. When you didn,t have optic correction this would be a larger cross and the lines are clean. It can be fixed no doubt about that. Problem is that it will cost money or you should do it your self. There is plenty of info on PL about beamcorrection

[gottaluvlasers]

2 words...

Chi-nese. There's your problem.

You'd be better off doing it yourself, PROPERLY.

(sitting on runway, shaking head...)

-Marc