Knife Edging Fixture....

[FhlostonParadise]

So I'm moving up a bit in the wattage my homebuilt projector is putting out, and my reds are clearly falling behind. I currently have 2 sharp 700mw diodes arranged with a pbs cube and would like to move that up to at least 4, but 8 might be a better target, since I already have the optics to combine 2 beams, a 2x4 arrangement might be the best.

I've seen the kits that lasertack sells, and they look great. The shipping cost (to US) is pretty substantial and the stock is also not looking so good.

Does anyone have a recommendation for an alternate? Would I be better off doing the CAD work myself and having someone cnc them for me? I'm good enough with CAD that I am comfortable with this task, but if the cost is not worth the time invested, it's probably better to know up front.

Thanks!

[kecked]

So I'm moving up a bit in the wattage my homebuilt projector is putting out, and my reds are clearly falling behind. I currently have 2 sharp 700mw diodes arranged with a pbs cube and would like to move that up to at least 4, but 8 might be a better target, since I already have the optics to combine 2 beams, a 2x4 arrangement might be the best.

I've seen the kits that lasertack sells, and they look great. The shipping cost (to US) is pretty substantial and the stock is also not looking so good.

Does anyone have a recommendation for an alternate? Would I be better off doing the CAD work myself and having someone cnc them for me? I'm good enough with CAD that I am comfortable with this task, but if the cost is not worth the time invested, it's probably better to know up front.

Thanks!

take two diodes and pbs them as you do now but put a 1/4 waveplate on one before the cube so you can over lap the beams. Now you have one set of beams twice the juice. Repeat this as many times as you want pairs. Knife edge each of the pairs so that you are stacking them up matching the slow axis. The best you can do is build a square. After that the beam gets way big. When done run this through a spatial filter to homogenize the beam and clean up the edges. You can then decide to use or not use a beam expander in reverse so the result beam is smaller but more divergent or the other way around. The beam expander can also be the spatial filter. In fact makes sense to combine.

first surface mirrors are cheap. Mount on mm1 for adjustability if you like. You can likely 3d print a mirror mount.