VDX, I was thinking the same for my FAP arrays. What type of "big " lens did you use? I was thinking I would need a f-theta to make the geometry correct,, but I could be wrong. I really would like to recombine them for a fiber laser since I have 2 spools of yb doped fiber from sdl. But I have been unable to fund fused combiners on the cheap. All the ones on eBay or either for low power or for 1550nm light. Also locating Bragg gratings have been a problem. I would love to try some nd doped fiber on my 808's but that never shows up either. I wish you could get the same conversion effeciancy with bulk media..
Combining several fibercoupled diodes can be as simple as point all the ends through a normal lens, big enough to hold all the beams and adjust the fiber ends, so the foci meet in a single spot.
Actually I'm developing single-diode modules for lasercutting, engraving and SLS - her a post (sorry, in German) with images, I made today with cutting plastic and engraving paint on a ceramic tile with powers of 2Watts to 5Watts: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?25...814#msg-227814
VDX- The results you have with the 2-5w is very impressive considering the low power! I was thinking about doing some SLS or SLA, but I haven't found any open source products yet. Know of any? And quick question...anyone know the drive specs for the 5w IPG diodes? Is it 2v at 10a or am I way off?
I had read in several places that the IPG diodes used Telecom design and were heavily derated for industrial use. Something I read had mentioned the 5w units as actually being 20w units but IPG wants the diodes to last 50k-100k hrs vs the 10k hr standard. Any thoughts? Maybe I'll murder test one and see what happens. I have enough. Lol. Thank you for the SLS links!
Well I found out the price difference between the 10 watt IPG laser and the 20 watt version is only a few hundred dollars. This makes me think they are identical inside and IPG is just driving the diodes in the 20 watt 1mJ version a bit harder.
Also makes me wonder if there would be some way of turning my 0.5J 10 watt model into a 20 watt model with a firmware change.
Too bad this isn't a large market product with hackers...only a few of us messing with these on the non-industrial side...
I have IPG-5, -9 and -25 types - the older IPG-5 have a housing that is nearly identical to the -25 ones, but they don't behave similar.
The IPG-5 has a nearly linear power-to-current curve with 0.4 to 5Amps for 0 to 5 Watts, the much smaller IPG-9 needs 9Amps for 9Watts ... and the IPG-25 gives 25 Watts with 9Amps!
I have the larger 5w versions that you have. Now the 25w is only drawing 9 amps? That's crazy! lol. What voltage is the 5w vs 25w? I also noticed you had a FAP coherent diode. Do any SLS or engraving tests with that guy? I have plenty of those laying around, up to 40w I think, maybe 1 that's 45-50 region. I wonder how bad the engraving would be with the multimode vs single...?
... powder-SLS and some other 'additive' methodes are next on my schedule ;-)
Did some freehand powder testing with 445nm@1Watt and IR with 808, 975 and 1070nm at powers of 2 to 20 Watts with some interesting results (e.g. selective evaporating of powder mixtures) ... will repeat this later again ...