Beam positionning before the dichro?

[Zoof]

dependng on the size and layout of your board one way to do it could be to deliberately put the lasers at a non-parallel angle to the baseplate. Sliding them back and foreward will give different beam heights at the dichro.

[aijii]

For those of us... monitarily challenged, what are good riser/shims to use for laser height positioning? You know ghetto style for us bums... I just got a nice piece of aluminum off astroguy for a base plate, but my blue is a little taller than my green which is in turn a tit bit taller than my red... I have taken apert a couple of processor water cooling blocks but they are still, as my cousin would put it, "a cunt hair" off... I know most of y'all have a machinest in your back pocket but I don't even know of one.

So, if I go to home depot or walmart, what should I look for?

Just get a piece of aluminmum machined down to size from your local machine shop. Its not that expensive.. really..

and you get it EXACTLY as you need. Just be liberal with the silicon grease to ensure proper heat transfer through the plate

[The_Doctor]

Just be liberal with the silicon grease to ensure proper heat transfer through the plate

Not too liberal! That stuff isn't a very good conductor of heat, it's just better than air. If there's enough to threaten the metal to metal contact you can lose more than you gain. If you got a machine shop to mill the plate flat, that contact will be excellent already, AND easier to damage by excess paste, so smear it fine and even, and slide the laser around on the film under firm hand pressure before clamping, to be sure the air is displaced completely.

[sbk]

You can use silver thermal grease too (for microprocessors), it is better than standard grease.

[The_Doctor]

Not by much, I've heard. I've heard more than once that the differences are very small, if you do it right. Maybe depends what it's loaded with. If it's really silver, I doubt it's more than 20% good, the other 80% being snake oil. If it were a fine suspension of indium I might be convinced, but you'd need a LOT of pressure to make it fit the surfaces with a molecular bond that could make any difference. You could never exert enough pressure over the large area of a laser base plate without warping it like plasticine at the points of fixing. There's so much area that a thin film of standard goop is more than enough.

There are even some reports that say the posh stuff used by overclockers is WORSE than the goop that most electronics people have used for years, but I don't know the conditions that made for that conclusion.

[allthatwhichis]

Heh... I'm an overclocker also... As a matter of fact, I am using Artic Silver 5 between the green and red and their plates. It's more of an adhesive for me, neither laser gets close to warm. I'm using it more to keep them in place. I can't figure a way to attach the laser to it's base.

I have a couple of ideas but I have a habit of making things harder than they need to be; the idea I have feels to me like it falls into that I'm making it too hard catagory... Drill holes into the base plate that match up with one of the holes in the bottom of the laser just drill the first half of the hole big enough for the head of whatever bolt I plan to use to sink flush and then the rest of the hole a size too big for the threads so the treads'll catch in the laser and the head wil catch the plate. I;m also finding it a pain to get bolts and screws to match these holes.

[JimBo]

I think the holes are imperial rather than metric, that will be why they are more difficult to find.
Don't forget that the laser will most likely need to be electrically isolated from the base.
I would suggest trying you local electonics store for the screws and isolation bits and bobs.
When you drill the holes to mount the laser you will find it easier to align if you make the holes into slots so that you can move the laser slightly to help alignment.

Jim