Losing 635nm red - small scanners

[majorlee]

So it seems the my 350mW(ish) 635nm red is so damn fat it wont even all fit on the first X scanner and it goes over the side of the Y scanner - its losing loads of the red power which would be better used in the main beam

I have seemed to align everything up now and getting a sort of near satisfactory white beam, it involved having to take out a metal plate under the green to get it lower since it was way to high and adjustments made it miss the dichro altogether!!! Also the adjustment screw for the blue is so far resessed that i needed micro-surgery to try and adjust the Y axis

but the red beam going up over the scanners (the edges) seems to be brighter and more defined than my show beam

Do u think it would be better to ask for a 650nm replacement from the seller

[allthatwhichis]

Welcome to the club my man. If you read the specs on most all red lasers, 635, 650, 660, they all have bad beam specs except Maxyzmodules, which are very suseptible to back reflection and some say might be a little too overdriven, and the creator/maker of them has back problems and is not doing too well with orders right now (rumor has it).

Another rumor has it there is another person out there who might be... persuaded into filling the Maxyzmodule "void" with a similar powered 635nm module. But this is UFO type talk... There have beeen no confirmed sightings.

[majorlee]

so do any other people have this problem with the red going over the sides of the scanners? what have you done to compensate?

also what i dont understand is why i dont get a huge red line on the wall - this one is puzzling me!

[aijii]

If you read the specs on most all red lasers, 635, 650, 660, they all have bad beam specs except Maxyzmodules

No.

Wide stripe, high power diodes have bad beam specs. There are high power options available in 640nm, and 650nm wavelengths from manufacturers such as RGB-Laser, arctos, hb-laser, medialas, swisslase, and more that combine multiple laser diodes into one tightish beam, that will fit onto most scanners.

However you pay out the arse for one, compared to the wide stripe diodes.

Majorlee: The solution to your problem is simple. got mirrors that won't take the whole beam ? upsize them!

Not all is bad if you have a wide stripe diode. the shitty divergence and fat beam makes them very easy to stack next to each other to get more power, and also makes for a much safer audience scanning show (obvoiusly coupled with other good audience scanning practices)...

[buffo]

so do any other people have this problem with the red going over the sides of the scanners?

Yes. Anyone that has a large beam 635 nm laser has this problem to some degree.

what have you done to compensate?

You can install larger mirrors on your scanners, as Aijii posted above. He actually sells replacement mirrors, and they have a set that is larger than the standard mirrors. But that will only help so much. At some point, you are still going to loose some power.

also what i dont understand is why i dont get a huge red line on the wall - this one is puzzling me!

You only get a beam on the wall that is the size of the mirror. The rest of the beam never makes it out of your projector. If you look closely at the spot on the wall you'll see that it has the same shape as the mirror on the scanners.

As for the mystery red lasers - that would be MechEng3's project. He's already discussed it briefly in another post, so I'll leave it to him to elaborate, but there *is* a way to tame the beam of a 150 micron diode stripe. It's just rather complicated.

Adam

[Dr Laser]

So it seems the my 350mW(ish) 635nm red is so damn fat it wont even all fit on the first X scanner and it goes over the side of the Y scanner - its losing loads of the red power which would be better used in the main beam

I have seemed to align everything up now and getting a sort of near satisfactory white beam, it involved having to take out a metal plate under the green to get it lower since it was way to high and adjustments made it miss the dichro altogether!!! Also the adjustment screw for the blue is so far resessed that i needed micro-surgery to try and adjust the Y axis

but the red beam going up over the scanners (the edges) seems to be brighter and more defined than my show beam

Do u think it would be better to ask for a 650nm replacement from the seller

've been there. I used is a reverse telescope or collimator in reverse. What it does is compressing the beam so it fit's onto galvos. Yes it screws up divergence even more then before but playing around produces a satisfactory beam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CtnoJwvqp4

You will have to lift some of the elements. When my new blue came I had to lift green + blue + both dichros and galvos.
Making spacers for your lasers/dichros/galvos is a well known fact and requires patience and a good collection of different size aluminum sheets...plus..bend saw drill press and a stationary grinder.

Asking for 650 will requires you to get minimum a power of 4 of 635. So if your's is 350mw then you will need 1.5W of 650nm.

You basically came across exactly the same problems everyone making over 200mw 635nm has.