Another one 2W red module (4x 638nm mitsu)

[jooopy]

Holy Scarlet Grail. Somebody alert Terrawatt! Nice work!

[Fearless]

Hi Bbe,
It looks like from the picture that you employed horizontal beam stacking = coming out of the diode housing--and then you rotated Dave's cylinder lens horizontally to tame the beam. I'm I correct? Could you provide a diagram of the beam profiles? I'm currently in the mist of building a Mits quad red knife edging vertically ||, so it would be interesting to hear you view on the matter. By the way, I had a nice visit with Planters last weekend and picked up a Laserwave 2 watt laser from him. His shop and set up is amazing!

[The_Doctor]

The cylinders are vertical, from what I can see. If you can save and enlarge the innards image four times, look closely at the small cylinder. It's clearly visible as vertical, as is the big one, and looking at the base of the small one shows that it, and the big one, both have their curved sides facing downrange. Each pair of diode is arrayed to stack beams vertically. (I'm not sure but it looks like there's a thin shim under one mount in each pair). The disk behind the PBS is almost certainly a half-wave plate to rotate polarisation while keeping the profiles the same for each pair. Bbe's later closeups might give a clue to profile.

[Fearless]

That is what I thought. So he is hitting the cylinder dead on in the middle with the two beams | vs hitting them side to side ||. Does that make it easier to align?

[m0f]

| makes for a square beam profile when expanded. || would be wider than it is tall once expanded. Stacking vertically is the way to go for the nicest profile..

[Fearless]

Great. Stacking vertically is the way to go. Any idea of the shim thickness?

[m0f]

2mm. Roughly the size of the beam coming out of Dave's lenses.

[m0f]

I had a bunch of .080" shims cut from aluminum sheet, at metal supermarkets. Which worked well for the purpose, had enough shims cut for $10 to build a lifetime worth of lasers Online it's a bit pricier, but they treat me pretty well at the local branch as I'm always in there for something..

[Bbe]

Many times it was discussed here, in the forum. I just made this stacking scheme more compact, nothing new. You can take a look at Andy's quad setup for a better understanding also. My phrase "I has cracked the mystery" was an ironic

[Bbe]

1.9mm )) It's very hard to catch, but it's worth it

2mm. Roughly the size of the beam coming out of Dave's lenses.