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Thread: Machado vs Machita

  1. #1
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    Thumbs up Machado vs Machita

    Hey Cats -

    After reading Mixedgas' excellent show-augmenting suggestions http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...82&postcount=4 thought I'd take just a moment to back him up on that and simultaneously throw my 2¢ in about our experiences with machita vs machados -

    No doubt - machitas make the finest spreads around, but we do have to say '3 cheers' for machado - very similar results, and bewteen $4-500. CHEAPER - the slight differences are really only more-noticeable (IN use - of course, WE all notice the diffs! with single-line shots (ie- 532'ers) vs multiline (ie- WLs), and we've used them with WLs up to 16+W and Green (KTP) up to 45+W, with NO damage... (OF COURSE you have to make sure you are shooting thru the NON-grated side of the glass in such cases! In any case, we hereby give '2 Beams Up' for the machado...

    http://www.creativelaser.de/hardware/grating_page_frame/maschado/maschado.htm in case any newcomers need to know/buy! - oh, here are some comparative shots of the machado in action at 3W, 8W, 20W and 40W respectively, for your viewing pleasure...(ps the 40W was beam chasing during the shot, so parts of the 180 are more 'missing' due to the time-exposure...
    - j
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails GX5W_Atmos_09.jpg  

    mac vs mac.jpg  

    DSC01422.jpg  

    SB_LS40_01.jpg  

    Last edited by dsli_jon; 01-05-2011 at 15:41.
    ....and armed only with his trusty 21 Zorgawatt KTiOPO4...

  2. #2
    mixedgas's Avatar
    mixedgas is offline Creaky Old Award Winning Bastard Technologist
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    Oh, droool. miss the good ole days of high power ......

    Steve

  3. #3
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    Cool Here's a Machida pic for ya!

    Check this out:



    That was done with a grating that I paid just 5 bucks for. Meridith instruments was closing them out on E-bay about 6 years ago. I didn't know at the time how cool they really were!

    Here's a pic of the actual grating up close (don't rag on me about the ghetto mount - this was taken 6 years ago!):


    As you can see, it's just a bunch of optical fiber that is spaced *really* close together. I figure it's probably good up to around a watt or two of power. (Maybe more, but I know it works at 1 watt because I've tried it.)

    Not a bad deal for 5 bucks, eh? (And it came with a huge, tilting aluminum mount with a solenoid and some sort of gear-locking mechanism. Wierd...)

    Adam

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    I would like to see some doublet machado/machita stacked horizontal/vertical, highpower-whitelight-burst-pictures. :-D

  5. #5
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    Default Niiiice!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffo View Post
    Check this out:

    Here's a pic of the actual grating up close (don't rag on me about the ghetto mount - this was taken 6 years ago!):

    Not a bad deal for 5 bucks, eh? (And it came with a huge, tilting aluminum mount with a solenoid and some sort of gear-locking mechanism. Wierd...)
    Hey Adam -

    Sweeeeet, dude! Very interesting sep - would love to see it color-cycle (ie split 'yellow' into just the red/green 'fingers' and 'magenta' into 457 and 650, etc... By any chance ya got any extras you'd sell-off?? And RE: Don't rag on me..ppppppffftttt! LOL - in our 'premier' line of KTP controllers, we use a piece of a McDONALDS STRAW as the 'channel' for you to stick one of those 'swizzle-stick' pot-trimmers into the back, to calibrate the digital panel meter (so you are not fumbling-around trying to find the tiny-little pot screw-head) - it's the only plastic tube we found thin-yet-rigid enough to do the job in the space it needs to occupy...) so don't worry about 'ghetto-mounts', bro - we're all 'scratchbuilders', here! - good sho! - got any more pix?? peace -

    - j
    ....and armed only with his trusty 21 Zorgawatt KTiOPO4...

  6. #6
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    Cool

    Hi Jon;

    Actually, the grating does separate all the lines by color. The camera I was using blended them back together because the resolution wasn't high enough to pick out the individual beams. But in real life you saw three fans - one of each color. I'm guessing that this grating will produce around 400 beams... The fan is like 175 degrees wide!

    The alignment was pretty far off - back then I was using a trichro to combine beams and I never got both near and far field to be perfect. (One or the other would be off) Still, for grating effects, sometimes a little mis-alignment actually makes for a cooler effect...

    I've got some more pictures of this grating in action in my gallery if you're interested.

    Also, a bit of an apology: I hadn't looked at the older photo albums in my gallery in quite a while. Thus, I didn't notice that some spammer had posted a shitload of comments to some of the pictures. Sorry about that! I've deleted all the spam and changed the permissions on my gallery so that you have to be logged in before you can post a comment. (Fucking spammers...)

    All the pics in that gallery are pretty old (5-6 years or so). I've only got one or two of those gratings left, but you can keep checking with Meridith Instruments and see if they ever get any more in. Or you might try replicating the design yourself. My guess is that with some optical fiber, a low power microscope, and a lot of patience, a person could build one of these themselves...

    Loved the story about the McDonalds straw tweaker guide! Glad to know I'm not the only one that scrounges from time to time. Like you said, sometimes you just use what works...

    Adam

  7. #7
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    clandestiny is offline Eleventy-Billion Watt Ar/Kr >:)
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    Lol, I regret I didn't get the chance to see those comments-
    go big or go home

  8. #8
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    Cool

    Clandestiny;

    Nah, they were pretty booring. Mostly things like "Nice picture! Now look at my site..." followed by a link to some site selling Viagra, or Condoms, or whatever... Loosers!

    Adam

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buffo View Post
    Hi Jon;...but you can keep checking with Meridith Instruments and see if they ever get any more in. Or you might try replicating the design yourself. My guess is that with some optical fiber, a low power microscope, and a lot of patience, a person could build one of these themselves...
    Loved the story about the McDonalds straw tweaker guide! Glad to know I'm not the only one that scrounges from time to time. Like you said, sometimes you just use what works...
    Hey Adam -

    Thank for the re-ply - any idea what MI called it? Optical-fiber grating? Pseudo-machita? How to eat more fiber?

    RE: McD straw - yeah, sometimes, scratchbuilding is the only way to fly - trouble is, finding another the NEXT time you need that little make-shifty!

    type to ya later..
    - j
    ....and armed only with his trusty 21 Zorgawatt KTiOPO4...

  10. #10
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    Cool

    Quote Originally Posted by dsli_jon View Post
    any idea what MI called it?
    Hehe... They called it a "line-generating optic". They didn't have a clue what it was for, or where they came from. I bought a couple of them and stuck them on a shelf.

    Years later, once I realized how cool they were, I tried to buy some more, but they were out of them. (Same thing happened with the Fujinon trichro's they used to sell.)

    Bottom line - if you see something you like at Meridith Instruments, you'd better buy it right then, because it probably won't be there when you return.

    Adam

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