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Great conversation with lots of excellent feedback from Adam & absolom7691. FWIW to newcomers, here's my evolutionary experience since returning to the scene ~ 5 years ago. Back in the day, there were only ion gas lasers, mostly krypton, argon or a mixture of the 2. So, I wanted an inexpensive,...

Thanks, Steve! I can always count on you to pop my balloon with sound science! lol. I figured it was probably not feasible or not practical, otherwise LD manufacturers would probably be doing it. I would imagine such a diode would be great for miniaturizing light engines for all kinds of...

problem is the die-air interface IS the output coupler, and some of these have stacked strained quantum well layers for tuning/HR mirror etc. Might be possible but would require a MAJOR research effort to do so, probably easier to put combining optics into the housing at a micro scale. You...

Interesting - Thanks!

... some years ago I was developing applications with/for paste-dispensers for high viscous glues and pastes. With this you can "print" all sorts and sizes of lenses or "regular surfaces" ... now image, you'll print some of this with the previously mentioned "Acrifix 192", what will give perfect...

https://www.mcmaster.com/products/perforated-metal/aluminum-perforated-sheets-7/ Laser Images used to use perforated aluminum dipped in lacquer as standoffs with a "granite" art glass disk or as a disk with some other lumia disk for a nice effect. You dip the perforated part in the lacquer and...

Very interesting, Gang. As it happens, I was very impressed with these similarly described components from Live LaserSystems in Austria and recently purchased their: 4 * Sparrow diode assemblies w/TEC, 4 * ColorDrive One + TEC diode drivers, 1 * EMS8000 galvos w/drivers Plus optics & mounts...

mesh | McMaster-Carr Mesh disks, stainless steel, look up Ronchi Ruling and find a diffraction calculator on-line. There is a limit on how fine you can go, but can be um, interesting at short range. Two plastic sheet gratings crossed to each other on motors is the transmission version of...

Taking a pointer to a stained glass shop can be a fun half hour. Aim at the ceiling. Problem is, its not well annealed, so making discs is an art form and drilling it is tough. Using a brass tube as a drill with abrasive powders, ie wet (water and detergent) 30,60,200 corundum or silicon carbide...

... a hint for transparent glue - here in Germany I'm using "Acrifix 192" for glueing/fusing Plexiglas ... it's curing to pure PMMA, so too usable for "optical chaos" sheets :cool: Viktor

Great tips. Thanks. For the lenticular FX we've ordered a couple of different small sheets from these folks we discovered on line to try out. www.vicgi.com They sell small quantities at reasonable prices. Time will tell it it works or not. Cheers, Craig

Thanks, yes, sounds like fun. We've played around a bit with that. It's cool, also the old airplane glue etc for lumia FX. Craig

Yes, I've talked to John on the phone and his module looks great, it's very sophisticated, and we may go that route down the line. We got a couple of the basic OPT versions before we knew about John's stuff and we'd like to customize those first probably. Thanks, Craig

... you'll get all sort of weird and funny "optical" stuff, when placing pieces of PMMA or other transparent thermoplastic materials ontop of elcetronic coolers, wire-meshes or other regular (or irregular too) structured metal surfaces into an oven and heating them at 120 to 140 centigrades (PMMA...

You could just buy the whole thing from Technological Artisans, John has a module with two steppers and a DMX controller that fits in front of a scanhead. Steve

Hi Conner, Do you consider ABLE laser? www.able-laser.com And do you have a budget? We have many customers in USA. If you can supply a budget and power scope, maybe we can help. For fast response, pls contact Ellen Chai, sales@able-laser.com

I have a lot of 35W 975 nm fiber modules which were sold as tested and good, the ones I powered up were, but I don't use lasers for anything practical, just for fun and still have two eyes too. I live out in a very rural area and have room to play, no airports anywhere near me but also not pointing...

... when powerfull enough, then it's pretty good suited for metal: - welding, melting, cutting ... and "3D-printing" >:) The 40W@975nm-diodes with attached 0,1mm-fibers were already enough, to melt lowtemp melting metal powder or many (dark) powders of other materials like plastic, lignin, glass...

What else to do with 1064 nm :p It's a long term project, but I have a few of them...... I made a SHG once before using 1064 nm out of a 15 KW peak power pulsed YAG, average power was only a few watts at 1064.

... ah, so meant for frequency doubling -- then good luck!

I have a lot of laser junk, mostly good parts, but no lasers which produce more than 10W at 532 nm. Would like to use these heads, have three of them, to build a high power 532 nm laser using one or two if OSC and PA arrangement.

... interesting design -- round 20 years ago I've helped to assemble the "ringfocus-laser", where 80(!) 20W-Diodes were collimated and the beams combined into 1.6kW on a "spot" roughly 6mm wide for metal welding. Actually I have many IR-Laserdiodes with up to 40W fed through 0,1mm-fibers or...

Each ring has five diode assemblies, each producing 20 watts IR.

... so in optimal setup around 100Watts averaged. If I think about te actual DPSS IR-Laserdiode modules wit 2Watts "output power" (read "averaged") -- they're pumping with a 25W-IR-Laserdiode and AFAIK 808nm wavelength ...

There are three 100W ring diode pumps in one ND:YAG head for this one, so that's 300 watts of IR pump into one YAG.

... with 100Watts pump power in a DPSS setup with AOM modulation the estimated pulse-peak-power should be something like some 10 to 100 Kilowatts and the averaged "CW" power is highly depending on the cooling methodes :cool: