Another Dead Laser - Warning Thread Contains Swearing!

[andyf97]

Thats a sollution to eliminate a possible cause..

More red power when you need it:

We use a similar option to this with a switch to allow modulation to the 638nm, its very handy when just doing red/orange beams. the switch allowing or diss-allowing modulation to the 638. Our switch is dmx controlled and effected in Pangolin showtime. Our best projectors have pangolin intros and QM2000.nets fitted and the dmx is a short cable from the QM2000 to an internal dmx reciever that uses a solid state analog switch IC to do the switching very fast.

When you need loads of red and not much interest in specific colours just flick the switch via dmx or manually and you have extra red.

[Jem]

Hi Andy

That's really interesting. What power ratio is the 638 Vs the combined 660's?

Is the dichro you are using to pass 638 / reflect 660 commercially available, do you have a link?

Cheers

Jem

[buffo]

I'd be interested in the source of that dichro as well! The best quote I was able to find was nearly $100 a pop in lots of ten or more, and that was for a 12.5 mm diameter dichro. (Pretty small!)

I like the idea of being able to add some 635 nm red (or 638 nm in your case) to the much deeper 660 nm red that I currently get from my pair of Maxyz modules. It's an easy way to get a lot more red while keeping the beam quality under control.

Adam

[steve-o]

638 and 650..whew! That's a pretty sharp cutoff.. 12 nm. I Imagine that wouldnt be cheap. Adam, what was yours, 635 and 660? I'd be interested in one of those. You got a graph from the mfg? What is the reflectance; 95% or better? And the transmission?

[mliptack]

Adam; It would be nice to get that GB going Any word on it lately?

12nm cutoff is tiny... but if they could do that, I wonder if they could do a 660/650nm. I was thinking about buying a high power 650nm from Bridge... but because of the low cutoff I think I am going to settle with about 5-600mw of 635nm

[buffo]

From this older thread:

Ok - got some info back. Semrock (located in Rochester, NY) may be able to help us. I just got off the phone with Colleen (585) 594-7055, and she told me all about their operation. They make custom dichros, notch filters, Rugate filters, you name it. They price everything by area, and they do offer volume discounts.

She said they have an off-the-shelf product that transmits from 660 nm to 825 nm, and reflects from 640 nm to 500 nm. They guarantee a minimum of 90% transmission efficiency at 660 nm, and 98% reflective efficiency at 640 nm. She also said that their specs were *very* conservative, and that we could probably expect 93% transmission and 99% reflective efficiency.

Now to cost: A lot of ten dichros that are 12 mm in size (doesn't matter if they are round or square) will cost $960 + shipping. So thats $96 each plus shipping. Not too bad, eh? To jump up to a 25 mm size (again, round or square) will cost $168 each plus shipping.

She said that it would take about a week to 10 days to process the order. She also said that if we ordered more than 10 units, the price would come down. As an example, an order of 100 of the 12 mm units would bring the cost down to around $60 per dichro.

That's the information I have. I'd love to see if there is a cheaper solution, however. If not, then I suppose we could go with a trial run of 10 of these dichros, assuming we had enough people sign up.

Adam

[andyf97]

Hi guys, I am away on business and when i return i will check where we got the filters from.

From memory they were not expensive and we might even have limited numbers of spares.

Andy

[steve-o]

Damn!! My dual Maxys just went out (again) looks like 2 dim leds now ... 1st one then the other right after it..30 seconds.. I dont understand it.. no back reflections; nothing I could see wrong.. I cant afford another dual repair, so I'm just gonna use my 636 'xperimental setup and dual it.. got the beam specs about where I want 'em.. 3x3 mm at the ap and 30x30mm @ 50 ft..
This sure is an expensive hobby.. 'course I could be a street racer and be blowing up a $15K N2O/dual turbo engine per week.. ..heh.....

[allthatwhichis]

Steve, PM marconi. Even if it is something you did, repair is much cheaper than replacment. Or dissect them and use the driver for your 636s...

[andyf97]

for both to have the same symptoms, it must be a power or grounding issue.