Research Project: Designing a single mirror, two DOF galvo

[TsevenT]

I thought it nice to give you some insights into a project I currently am working on.
First a little background information. At the moment I am a third year student Mechanical Engineering at the Dutch University of Twente. In a few months I will complete my bachelor and today I received the final assignment to do so. Over a period of four months, I will be working in a group of nine students, developing a new sort of galvo scanner.

The idea is to create a single mirror galvo, capable of doing the work of a dual mirror galvo. In other words, create a galvo of which mirror can do both the X and Y rotations. The application to think of, is to be able to use high powered lasers in order to create hydrophobic surfaces on say metals. Current setups work with dual mirror galvo's, but they pose to be too inaccurate. Our goal is to create a more accurate and precise galvo, able to match the current setup, or do better.

The design we come up with will be actually build in a test lab, so will get some results. This project will contain the design, the build and testing of the galvo. Besides the mechanical design, an electromechanical system has to be created in order to have the galvo achieve the required precision and speed. I wil try to keep you posted on our progress as we get along.

Cheers!

[taggalucci]

That sounds really interesting! Yes, please do keep us posted

[astatic]

This is very nice, i will follow this subject closely.
But i think you will create galvo's for industrial perpose and not the galvo's we are using which are high speed galvo's?

[laserwinkel]

Very interesting if this will be a large mirror around 5 mm
FYI: the pico projector from microvision uses a single mirror also if i am right ( http://www.microvision.com/showwxplus )

[TsevenT]

As of yet I can not say what the speeds or dimensions are going to be. We are given just some minimal requirements and have to start from scratch to meet them. Even the VCM and the software controlling the mechanical parts are to be designed. Our goal is to be able to create a surface finishing as shown on this slide by having the laser follow the path as shown. The dimensions are small (order of magnitude 20 µm) and the tolerances even smaller.

[mixedgas]

As of yet I can not say what the speeds or dimensions are going to be. We are given just some minimal requirements and have to start from scratch to meet them. Even the VCM and the software controlling the mechanical parts are to be designed. Our goal is to be able to create a surface finishing as shown on this slide by having the laser follow the path as shown. The dimensions are small (order of magnitude 20 µm) and the tolerances even smaller.

General Scanning has sold a two axis, flexure based, unit, What mirror dimensions are you aiming for?

Steve

[planters]

The SDI program 25 years ago began to research flexure mount/ voice coil stabilizing mirrors for laser stabilization. Large mirrors were no problem, but the problem with these systems was the limited scan angle. A 20 degree mechanical flex is pretty steep