Opnext HL6545MG Diodes

[The_Doctor]

I've wondered about that too. Is Lightscribe the tech that writes the labels on the top side? I've also wondered if it needs special top sides. Not looked into it closely cos my burner is ONE step away from the one that can do this stuff... I've read that there is very little difference between that and a burner for 16x though, maybe just firmware, I read, but I think there's more to it.

[JimBo]

You need to use lightscribe blanks to write on.
They have a special laser sensitive coating and an extra track on the label side so that the writer can burn in the same place on multiple passes so that you can do various shades.
At the moment they are mono but I believe they are going to produce colour versions, I am unsure wether the colour version will be tri-colour or just one base colour.
The cost between the lightscribe and regular 20x liteon is only a few quid ($).

Jim

[The_Doctor]

I might have a go then. I can try the firmware change, if that's all I need except the disks. Last time I tried I borked it, even though the 'update' was apparently official! I went back to the one that it came with, and all is well. Lightscribe is cool, it makes it seem wrong to rip diodes out of burners.

[p1t8ull]

So i missed out eh,

damm, the collimator's from MI arrived today, but now i don't have anything to put in them..

Is there going to be another group buy sometime soon Pit?

BTW, these collimator's look quite nice. Great service from MI there..

Sorry Dave and absolutely. As soon as Photonic UK get more stock of the diodes, they said they'll let me know and we'll get some more... hopefully early April.

It would be good to know what kind of spec beam those MI collimators produce with these as a source.

Pit.

[PNjunction]

I've had a hankerin' for this MI case and glass lens for a couple months. Gotta' get one at some point.

Looks to have a lot of nice features for the price, and for only $5 more they have great little companion heatsink. Diodes are easily removeable, fingertip focusing, somewhat fat beam (almost 5mm), but in trade you get a big aperture, and glass AR lens letting all that nice power through, should be low divergence... etc.

One of these with a 20X diode will make one hell of a high visibility red astronomy pointer.

[ABSolute]

Regarding collimating these diodes I found this type of lens:

http://www.optima-prec.com/molded.htm

The 305-0464-780 has an NA of 0.5, but we actually need one with NA 0.55.
My knowledge of optics is to limited to tell what the difference will
be between the two.
I think we will have a loss of about 15%.
Can someone confirm this?

Thanks,

Abondi

[marconi]

Hi Abondi

Thats a good lens just AR coated at the wrong wavelength
And as you may have figured out NA increases with smaller FL
Good for less losses but not always good for beam and spot size.
May I suggest looking at the Thorlabs acrylic lenses
one comes to mind is the CAY033 or the CAY046
altho AR'd for 780 they're pretty damn good, Very similar to ours but cheaper.

[The_Doctor]

May I suggest looking at the Thorlabs acrylic lenses
one comes to mind is the CAY033 or the CAY046
altho AR'd for 780 they're pretty damn good, Very similar to ours but cheaper.

Indeed. Also, as far as I can tell from info from LasIRvis, the CAY033 is not AR coated in its CAY033/040 form, to fit a 4 mm bore, only in its larger flanged-rim form (which is probably what you need though...). Maybe even the wrong AR coating is better than none though, I haven't considered this point before.

[ABSolute]

According to the specifications in the pdf file the lens can be used from
635 - 850nm.

Thicker beams are not really a problem, I would like to use a "inverse" beamexpander after the combiner cube.

What will be the difference between an acrylic and glass lens in our application?

[marconi]

Actually they make them in different AR coatings
Just the example from Thorlabs were at 780.
We have ours specially made for 660.
Photonics has them at 670 which I think is not much different
at least nothing you will notice.. performance-wise

If your doing a single or duals with a cube..its perfect
Now if your talking quads or more,. now thats a different animal altogether.
Reverse expanding telescope will help but you will have a tremendiously
big beam at the galvos.