Oh, I'm not building a laser projector.
I'm just mixing two red/green/blue beams with dichros to get beams of specific colors I want in my garage.
Oh, I'm not building a laser projector.
I'm just mixing two red/green/blue beams with dichros to get beams of specific colors I want in my garage.
Sounds like a projector without the scanners
As Norty said, adjust for white and the software takes care of the rest, and if it doesn't then in the best software, you can pre-set specific colour points as well.
If you're doing it without software (it almost sounds as if your using pointers), then perhaps a better explanation of what you're trying to achieve would help, because if you want anything other than a pinpoint beam, LED would probably work a lot better in providing eg a colour wash and be a lot safer. An unmodulated laser beam is many orders of power more dangerous than a modulated one. (Or to put it in very simple terms - if I project a modulated pencil beam from my projector, it will quite happily project onto paper from 10 feet or so without any drama. If I project an UN-modulated pencil beam, it will have melamine or chipboard smoking and burning from 30 feet within a second, and I'm guessing you don't want to burn objects or people within your garage.
yep, just want to achieve a static eg. violet beam.
Why? I don't know, It's just something I want to do and see. You don't ask why people make 7W blue pointers as there's no use for it, or spend time catching all the 151 pokemon in their video game. It's just a hobby.
I own a laser projector and noticed by now that projecting anything but a single point doesn't burn anything.
I've watched laser safety seminars.
Not really completely new to lasers.
You could that easily with your projector. Just going into the drawing program in your software, create a static pencil beam or hot beam in violet, and project.
I know I can project a color combined beam with my laser projector. I know how laser projectors (2 color or rgb) and dichros work...
The diodes I'm going to experiment with are much higher power than my projector, or any projector I could afford and wouldn't need.
I think my question is very clear at this point, but since you still seem to be curious why I want to do this or maybe thinking I'm asking the wrong question for what I need, there you go.
Not trying to patronise you, just trying to understand your motive for going to separate diodes rather than the projector. Anyway, I have nothing else to contribute so I'll leave the rest of this thread to others. Good luck with the project.
If you know how laser projects and dichros work then you shouldn't need to ask the question - the same techniques apply, you just aren't putting a set of scanners in the beam path. Combine your lasers, use drivers that allow analogue modulation and then adjust each laser until you achieve the colour you want. Buy powers close to what you'd need for a nice white and adjust as necessary.
Cheers White-Light. I fully understand where you're coming from, I'm not doing something people want to do usually.
I kind of disagree. If it was that simple nobody would need a program like Chroma or ask the question whats a good balance for white.
Sure, for "fine tuning" a driver like you mentioned will be needed. But if I want, say, a 5W violet beam, I need to know how many 1W 445nms to buy and how many 0.7W 638nm diodes to buy before I buy them. I can try what you suggested after I buy the diodes, in which case I might end up wasting money by getting wrong quantity of each.
Just an example numbers.
And analog driver adds to the total cost too.
I see what you're getting at now - You confused me a little bit when you mentioned RGB and multiple colours in one of your earlier posts. Chroma well get you close (then you can tweak from there) if you are just going for one specific colour, although it's not perfect due to different monitors not displaying exactly the same colour (hence the tweaking).
I should add, I had Chroma working at some point later on in 2014 - If you can send me a link to the download (Having trouble finding a working one now) I can try and get it running again, I have too many machines to keep track of - Don't know if I still have it installed or even what machine it would be on. I remember having to jump through some hoops to get it going though.
Last edited by Diachi; 03-19-2015 at 12:33.