Quick and dirty test setup pics

[RGbee]

So I finished soldering all the power and mod cables for my driver board the other night and so i thought i'd do a 'very quick' and dirty setup after adjusting the current/bias. This was without optics or dichros (yet) other than a couple of odic barrels on the blue and red. Shot was at approx 7m
445 at around 700ma
ML520G71 @ 5-600ma
532 @ unknown mw

Cheers






Front door

[LaNeK779]

a mini rig!! excellent.

something like this is definately on my to do list.
i am fairly sure i have most parts here or there somewhere

[andyf97]

what lens did you use on the ML520G71, looks pretty close to the 445 width.

So I finished soldering all the power and mod cables for my driver board the other night and so i thought i'd do a 'very quick' and dirty setup after adjusting the current/bias. This was without optics or dichros (yet) other than a couple of odic barrels on the blue and red. Shot was at approx 7m
445 at around 700ma
ML520G71 @ 5-600ma
532 @ unknown mw

Cheers






Front door

[planters]

The collimation of the red is impressively good. Is this just perspective and the "bad" divergence is in the vertical orientation, for example? I second the question; what were the lenses used for the red and blue and what were the spot sizes and at what distance?
Thanks

[danielbriggs]

Sweeeeeeet. Good work Ade.
I am liking the recent "glut" of build+photo-logs; the essence of PL in my opinion!

[p1t8ull]

Nicely done, and very cute

I am liking the recent "glut" of build+photo-logs; the essence of PL in my opinion!

Yes indeed, more of this =

[RGbee]

Thanks!
@ andyf97 & planters
The spot on the 445 (asides from the surrounding splash) is much better than the red. Unadjusted, the red was oriented with the fast axis on the vertical. Horizontal after Adjustment with lens.
To be honest i really have no idea what the specs are on both either the blue or red Odic lenses, other than they’re 3 element glass and coated for 445 and 635 respectively. I’ll email Jon this morning to see if he knows
I did manage later on to get the beam significantly smaller using some Meredith optics. However, the edge thickness on the PCX lens i used is much smaller and with a shallower bowl than, say, Dave’s ones.
I'll mess around tonight both with and without the extra MI optics and take some more pictures and measurements

Adrian

[RGbee]

Last night I took some quick measurements of the MLG71, both with and without extra optics (apologies for the makeshift target on the door )

Unadjusted (just lens) at 9m (27feet)


Adjusted using these:


Any suggestions on how to clean these lenses, or remove the artifacts around the blue?

Cheers
Ade

[planters]

Firstly, without a doubt the easiest and probably the best cleaning method I have used is First Contact available in small quantities from Stanwax.The only other method I would recommend is a single swipe with lens paper and reagent grade acetone(there are about half a dozen various grades of acetone), just don't use the consumer grade which contains a significant amount of recycled oils and other industrial contaminates.

However, I don't think your problems are primarily due to dirty lenses. The red spill can be reduced somewhat by masking the spurious light put out by the diode in front of the diode itself. A better method is to use a symmetrical positive lens pair prior to the correction optics and passing the midpoint focus through a small hole ( a spatial filter ). This works quite well. The blue will also benefit from this process, but it also looks like you have a little misalignment of the main axis of beam divergence and the correction optics ( seen as the tail on the left side in the image).

[RGbee]

Yeah, i got some First Contact from Rob a couple of years ago and use it a lot, just not sure how easy it would be to apply to optics so small