Projector case design

[loopee]

troy-

thats a GORGEOUS projector!

-Marc

Hey Marc

I've just added some more pictures of the internals

Enjoy

Troy

[dave321]

wow ! just goes to show what great planning can achieve.
thats a great design, great as reference "doc"

dave321

[gottaluvlasers]

troy-

that is probably one of the most inutitive ways to run the optics/dichros in a projector! WOW!!

the idea of shooting the beam up 90 degrees to the dichro is VERY smart! now you dont need to worry aobut beam heights form base using different manufacturer lasers! SIMPLY AMAZING!

if i were you, patent that idea! as far as i know it has never been done before. EXCELLENT job though!

do you know what your losses are off of each mirror?? that would be the only minor setback i could see using that configuration. the losses off of each mirror and then the dichro losses. as opposed to *JUST* the dichro losses.

great job my friend!

-Marc

[highvolt]

I might be wrong on this, but every setup that uses a 2 extra mirrors for the 2 dichros eliminates the height setting for the laser. No matter if you point up, left, right... etc..
In fact, Once you have at least 3 axis of rotations (2 for the dichro, and 1 for a mirror) the height setting of the laser is canceled out.

I use a regular setup for the dichro's without any mirrors, but I mounted my lasers at a 90degree roll angle (if the laserbeam is the rotating axis, rotate 90 deg around it). I then mount the laser on an L-bracket with 2 slides in it.
This way, it's easy to set the height and 'pitch' of the laser because you can get easily at the screws. the 'yaw' rotation and translation I can do at the L-bracket screws.

The laserscanner also is more compact this way.

[aijii]

nice projector troy.

how stable are the home made 45 degree mounts ? are you finding you're always having to readjust them after vibration/travel/show or are they rock solid ?

nice idea btw.

[loopee]

Gottaluvlasers
Losses? To be honest no idea as I don’t have a power meter yet, however as I’ve gone for the higher power lasers I therefore consider them to be acceptable. I’m also using Bridge's Dichro’s so I am minimising where I can.

Highvolt
You are correct with this however this solution provides me a way of easily adjusting the beam to the centre of the dichro and then I only need to do fine adjustment on the mounts. It also keeps everything at ninety degrees therefore keeping the dichroics at forty five degrees for maximum efficiency.
Initially I was looking at using two mounts per laser but I quickly went away from that idea due to cost, complexity to mount and limited (and more complex) adjustment.
One other reason I went for this method is that I wanted to keep all of the optics on the optics bed so that if I want to change the laser feed I can just undo four screws and take it out then drop another one in with say a fibre feed arrangement.
The main idea was to simplify the arrangement and to be flexible, with this I only have four adjustments to make, one on the first stage and three on the second.
One last thing, I reckon I could swap out a laser and have it aligned within ten minutes no matter what laser I dropped in! (There are other factors that may limit this, i.e. physical size, power supply, but for the optical component it’s simplified for a similar laser)

Aijii
To be honest not as stable as I would have really liked, but as a conceptual idea they’re not too bad especially once adjusted and the locking screw is tightened. If I had access to a milling machine I would have engineered something with more body and better tolerances (therefore more stability) but ya gotta work with what ya got!
Also, they are only designed to roughly align the laser to the centre of the dichro, once aligned and locked I don’t touch them.
As they only went in last weekend I have no idea how well they travel and at this stage this is only a hobbyist’s projector that probably won’t move that much. I haven’t really considered doing commercial shows yet but maybe I will in the future I (in Sydney the whole Laser thing doesn’t seem to be in fashion at the moment, don’t know what it’s like in Melbourne for you guys)
At this point it pretty much fulfils my passion for coherent photons (getting some hands reaching for the lasers will be a future thing)

FourDee
I’ll apologise as I feel my projector has hijacked your thread
BTW, I’ve started a new thread with some specs of it here: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...ead.php?t=5136

Troy