Another project red?

[hobbybob]

Hi MechEng,

What do the triangular lenses on the left do (in picture 3) ?
Do they shape/alter to beam to be a tighter beam ?

[MechEng3]

They are a pair of anamorphic prisms. They were employed to compress the beam in one axis. The one AR coated for red are almost extinct now...unles you buy new. I think EO gets around $130 for the pair unmounted. They are nice when called for.

[daedal]

Hi MechEng,

What do the triangular lenses on the left do (in picture 3) ?
Do they shape/alter to beam to be a tighter beam ?

They are called an anamorphic prism pair.

Check it out here:
http://www.toptica.com/page/Anamorphic_Prism_Pairs.php

Note that they can also be used to do the opposite

--DDL

[buffo]

Hey Mike...

With this 12-diode array, how were you thinking about aligning the diodes? I'm assuming you'd mount them all in a line (6 each side) and shim the diode mounts up as needed to stack them vertically, and then use the slotted holes on the mirror mounts to slide them fore and aft to align horizontally, right?

Remember what we talked about before with regard to having a "Z" adjustment on the mirror mounts to aid in the knife-edge trick when stacking vertical beams? Thinking that such an adjustment would be a lot more useful in this design... (I'm pretty sure Daedal had an old design on paper that looked like those small flex-mounts, but with a slight vertical adjustment too. I wonder if he's still got that laying around someplace...)

I suppose if you had a mounting jig so you could ensure the mirrors are all at exactly the same height on the mounts you could just shim the mounts to accomplish the same thing, but gluing the mirrors to the mounts with that sort of precision is going to be tricky. (Unless you can machine a groove in the mount to serve as a mirror-stop when you attach it.?. Whatcha think?)

Adam

[daedal]

I'm pretty sure Daedal had an old design on paper that looked like those small flex-mounts, but with a slight vertical adjustment too. I wonder if he's still got that laying around someplace...

Adam

Good call Adam. I do have it... and I'm looking at it now

The design was based off of the main constraint being vertical adjustment. It allows motion in all directions freely. It is intended for mirror mounting, and rotating the mirror around its center was not a design consideration.

I'll try to sketch it out and post it on here

--DDL

[daedal]

Good call Adam. I do have it... and I'm looking at it now

The design was based off of the main constraint being vertical adjustment. It allows motion in all directions freely. It is intended for mirror mounting, and rotating the mirror around its center was not a design consideration.

I'll try to sketch it out and post it on here

--DDL

Here ya go... I just quickly tossed this together to demonstrate the concept



The silver pieces are springs. The mirror would mount to one of the hex faces. Ideally, this would mount to another plane (beam table, or a second block for the springs to push against).

I think that this is so simple and can be rough-drafted using parts from any hardware store...

--DDL

[andy_con]

if you need lens to combine lots of beams in parallel into a single usable beam then edmund optics -

3x telescope NT47-348 and a NT47-911,

2x telescope NT47-346 with a NT47-911

...NT47-348 ..........NT47-911
................\ ......./
Beam ----> |) ...)| ---->

[MisterWilling]

This thread came at interesting time, right when I gave up on an effort trying to knife edge four beams and shrink them down.
I gave up because of my complete lack of knowledge of optics. I do CNC programming for a living so I have the ability to build anything, but not the the mind to design it. Maybe there is new hope for me; as long as the optics to shrink the beams down are not outrageously expensive.

[buffo]

Misterwilling - where are you located? If Daedal's new mirror mount idea pans out, it might be cool to get a few machined to see how they work in real life...

Adam

[MisterWilling]

Dallas, TX.
I have done work for a certain forum member who can vouch for my quality. Although he won't be able to speak for about a week because I just shipped him the parts today.