Axicons to combine diodes for a single beam.

[allthatwhichis]

Then how come I'm sending glass out for coating and your Not?

Steve

Cause we need God quality optics, not mere mortal genius... His "die" don't go up that high...

[The_Doctor]

Post deleted, to avoid time wasting.

[mixedgas]

You know what , I'm the one that proposed the things on alt lasers on the first place. I didn't invent the technology, I've never claimed that. Somebody at Boston Laser did years ago, and patented it, for fiber coupling, and probably somebody before that. I've seen videos of tarm or lobo using giant ones for rerouting beam effects in mid flight. Since I did that alt.lasers post, the patent for display use by anybody, including me, went right out the window under US and EU law. You did a lot of nice modeling in sketchup. But here is the deal, short of a diamond CNC optics mill (and they do exist) the cost of making a N sided pyramid goes up dramatically at N > 4 due to initial fixturing costs. Next, the coating accuracy starts to suffer at more then 4 faces. And the place that produces it is gonna have a hard time holding tols at N>4.

I've had 8 beams reflecting off a piece of rough artistic glass, I've seen how hard it is to align etc. I've seen what it does in the near and far fields etc.

Ns gonna be 4, with maybe a 5th beam up the middle. R is gonna be about 80%, because applying a dielectric on 4 faucets is 4 coating runs, that leaves enhanced silver which can go down in one run. So you need the 5th beam to make up for the 20% loss.

I don't have any money either, I'm giving the damn thing away to get it out there cause I love this industry.


BJ had a nice line in Big Shot:

GO ON AND CRY IN YOUR COFFEE, but don't come bitchin' to me

Roberts

[The_Doctor]

Post deleted, to avoid time wasting.

[allthatwhichis]

How are the lasers going to be mounted, directional wise to the optic? The beams all have to come in at different angles based on the side they are entering from. This is going to make a complicated layout.

[mixedgas]

The proverbial ring of fire, ie you have 4 lasers on a plate at 90' to each other, plus the possible one up the middle on the back of the plate., No matter how tight you CNC it, there will need to be some adjustments , so tip/tilt/height for each collimator assembly, thats 3 fine pitch Screws . Or each laser can do a 90' bounce off a MM1 on its way there, and the optic is on another mm1, using the usual hole in the mm1 for rotation of the optic. Its not hard to align once you set one up, what gets difficult is when you go to a large N of faucets, is the quality of the optic really comes into play. It would help if you can spin the diodes for polarization. Aligning 8 of them into a 35' angle piece of glass (what I could get a local glass artist to make) was nontrivial due to component spacing. This way you can combine up to 10 lasers by polarization.

You get either a flower shaped or a square beam depending on how you set it up, but it actually is very stable on the bench.

I've seen it run, and it fits nicely on Dt30 and eyemagic scanners,


Steve

[daedal]

I dunno why, but I kept imagining the whole setup as one piece... I hope I explain this clearly enough...

If we are to use 4 mirrors and one central beam for 5 total combined beams, couldn't we use something like the ones pictured here:
http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...ead.php?t=6323 (either)

Setting them up on pivot points (easy enough with a mounting screw from below the module), which, if the hole were somewhat elongated, would allow for horizontal adjustments, the screw can also be used to modify the vertical alignment. The central beam would be directly behind the axicon shooting straight through... I'm assuming a hole right through the center of the axicon itself, but I'm not saying this is easy to make either

Think of it as a cube with one side open. The open end is the output path, the four sides are the lasers going in, and the back side (closed) will have the mounting for the central beam.

Given that the optic will see light in 4 directions, the mounting can be done from any of the 4 diagonal sides (facing towards the corners of the cube).

Adjustment on this setup would not be very difficult, and obviously can be made easier with MM1's, but to achieve the maximum potential, least number of components, and smallest space, only one optic should be used (the axicon itself).

Total power with this setup would be 5 X 200mW per diode if used for red, total of 1W 658nm. Take away about 3% for the single optic from each of the bouncing diodes, and take away ~5% of the total output for strays, or any other reason, and you're left with ~930mW of red! That is some kick-ass setup!

Requirements:
* CNC'd cube from one piece of aluminum
* 5 CNC'd mounts like what dar303 made
* 1 axicon with mount

Shouldn't be too expensive, and if I had the money and time, I would start making this right away...

Assuming an optical cube can have one corner shaved off, and plated with a reflective material, the shaved off corner can serve as the mounting solution.

Another way of mounting the cube would be to use a 45-degree mount (http://www.newport.com/45-Degree-Ped...3/catalog.aspx) and screw the cube in place, allowing the beams to adjust around it.

Should making a custom 'holed' cube be the most difficult part of this entire setup, we can forgo that part and only have ~750mW of output power... Not sure many other can do this much power easily in a DIY setup as things stand right now

Any suggestions/comments?

--DDL

[mixedgas]

etup as things stand right now

Any suggestions/comments?

yeah, 1 the positioning of the die in the can varies a bit, and so does the first collimating lens. which makes it hard to hit the tip of the pyramid.
PUt slots under the lasers for adjusting by sliding and rotating, two mounting screws per laser. Or put each laser in a MM2 type mount and skip the fold mirrors.

You want this, see attached.

[daedal]

Quickly threw this together as I don't have much time now... I hope this helps explain it a bit... I will add more details later... Assume the laser modules (little boxes) had a screw attachment to the bottom, and that gives them a small amount of rotation. The height of the module can also be modified using the same screw... The horizontal movement would require an elongated opening through the aluminum 'casing'.

--DDL

[daedal]

P.S. Note that I am using a pyramid, not a cube. The cube (as shown in the first render) only reflects 3 beams...

--DDL