How to create super bright laser beams

[planters]

Yes, I pulled the single mode diodes and tryed to replace them with P73 diodes. I screwed up and put in 3, LPC open can diodes instead. Boy, are these dim in comparison. Fixed this and mounted these on the stainless bar. Aligned and focused I measured the centerline for each, 635.8, 635.8 and 636.1 nm. The band width down to about 30% of peak (not the standard 50%) was 1.7 nm for all of them. Everything else ready for the moment of truth and here I am stuck at a resort in St. Lucia. It's brutal. So, a few days to get past this and back to work.

[logsquared]

I am stuck at a resort in St. Lucia. It's brutal.

Sounds awful. Really feel bad for ya!

[planters]

I'll survive, but I'm impressed with the lack of lasers here. One bar/club with some not too bad music and one 1W(?) overhead peojector. This is only one town, but a significant one. Anyway, the gradient bar technique is only temporary, so I'm hoping you have success with the picaxe.

[danielbriggs]

The injection current shift seems to be instantaneous. Not sure if it is linear with diode temp? As soon as Planters gets his rig running we should have some answers.

A video I did a while back; hope it helps

[kecked]

http://www.picaxe.com/Hardware/Proje...re-Sensor-Kit/

[dave]

Hmmm, the Ds18s20/B20 are probably way to slow for this application. The best bet is a NTC..

I made a pretty good start, but with a Atmel XMEGA and some ported Arduino code. I even have a PCB waiting to be built up to give 8A bidirectional tec drive!

Hmm, its all sitting here - another project unfinished... Is anyone keen to add to my start?

[planters]

Daniel,
I do remember that video. This helps to varify the magnitude of these wavelength shifting effects. As I posted above, I screwed up and mounted one of these very same diodes in my experiment and before I replaced it I measured the line width at 4.5nm. The Oclaro 170mW single mode also had a fairly wide line width at 2.5 nm. As you have demonstrated tempreture shifting is effective. It is line width that will prove to be the bane of this technique.
Kecked,
What I'm wondering is if these picaxe based components can be modified or interfaced to allow multiple parallel channels with at least several A/channel for the TECs. This is what logsquared is hopefully going to try to do.

[MICKEY S UK]

Hmmm, the Ds18s20/B20 are probably way to slow for this application. The best bet is a NTC..

I made a pretty good start, but with a Atmel XMEGA and some ported Arduino code. I even have a PCB waiting to be built up to give 8A bidirectional tec drive!

Hmm, its all sitting here - another project unfinished... Is anyone keen to add to my start?

What needs doing? I have some arduino coding experience and a bit of PCB assembly experience but am Uk based.

[ams09]

What needs doing? I have some arduino coding experience and a bit of PCB assembly experience but am Uk based.

Hi, and i have plenty of "classic" components ( active, passive, etc...) for free, if is a good project...

Cheers.

[flecom]

1.2W each? That would need some serious cooling if you ask me. Hard to justify to a customer when selling a module.......
So we are back to combining 2 quads. If the p73 diodes are that great why don,t we see the bigger manufactures like Kvant and Artos using them? The p73,s are too much hassle to get a graphics quallity beam but they are fine for beamshows and that is pretty much it. You see that chinese companies that are in the low-end beamshow market use them but in the highend market the divergence has to be lower then 1mrd and that is very hard to get. But you get an A+ for effort from me because i haven,t seen anybody here that are doing so much testing as you have

who cares what kvant does? they can't even align their modules