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Registered Member #509
Joined: Sat Feb 10 2007, 07:02AM
Location:
Posts: 329
... wrote ...
<snip>
Couple of updates (but I hate to make a triple post...) 1. The glass blocks work great! I glued up the red/uv diodes and even with mild pressure the beams stayed aligned A quick back of the napkin calculation says that I have locked the mirrors down to about 2microns 2. I pulled the plate off the mounting setup and the beam moved about about a mrad (I am trying to keep them aligned to 1/4mrad). Pissed off, I decided to apply a little pressure to the plate, and found that even with a few ounces of prssure I could walk the beam .5mrad. So, now I am going to have a plate made out of 1/4" thick Al (compared to the .064" pate with 1/4" fins on it) and hope that solves it.
In the mean time, it is time to make some drawings...
Dont think of that as a bad thing nessicarily, you could possibly mount the current plate on the 1/4" plate with heavy stand-offs. Drill and tap threaded holes in the 1/4" plate and use some fine thread(4-40 or maybe even 2-56)set screws to try and precisely adjust the thin plate and the beam alignment.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
To steer the beam I am using the assembly out of some cheep laser projector (you know those ones that have a 5mw red diode that do like circles and stars) I ripped out the old diode and shined the beam from the RGB into it.
As to using set screws to adjust the aluminum, there are just too many axis to keep aligned. There are the 6 translation (x/y for each beam) which 'only' need to be kept to about +/-.02", and then the 6 angular (pitch/yaw for each beam) axis which need to be kept to a simply insane .2mrad.
My solution...
A nice aluminum box ;)
Using the magic of SoldWorks, lets turn that aluminum into glass...
heck, while we are at it lets turn everything clear (yes, I did draw everything in there --save for the LED and DB9 connector that I found online)
A better angle
Without all of the extra stuff
If only this would work in real life...
I still need to add in some screws holding the box together, and find someone that will machine it for me. I have had McFluffin do some work for me, but I thinking I might need to have this sent out, right now ACS is looking pretty good, I can't imagine it taking more than an hour to machine the pieces...
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Too bad SolidWorks can't build the thing for you! :P Anyway, this looks like a great project, I told the guys at my old workplace about it and they were pretty impressed. From the pictures, it looks like you got the beam alignment pretty good, for a few seconds at least
If it were me, I'd align it as best I could and then mess with the collimators to make the laser spots bigger and hide the remaining error.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
Well it took a while (almost 2 years to the day) I finally found a way into a machine shop (yay for living at UCSB), and got around to actually manufacturing this beast!
The hand crafted case
Back on the table ready for some alignment.
Some nudy shots...
A shot of the lasers running, and the overall system.
It does burn surprisingly well if focused (between the 3 colors you have a pretty good chance something will absorb considerably, and after it starts to char you get all 3 beams contributing to the power, which right now is only about 150mw due to crappy optics) And a final shot of the beam being refracted off a dvd-rom (my camera doesn't pick up the 405nm hardly at all, so the spot looks yellow)
I am already working on rev3.b, I had issues with the glue on this one, both with the optics drifting around and low power. The optics problem was because I ended up having to use my 3-years-after-the-expiration-date-cure-to-the-
consistency-of-chewing-gum uv cure glue due to an incomparability between my curing system and the glue I bought. They seemed pretty solid, but after a week or so the beams drifted to the point where they aren't even touching after more than a few feet, which gives some odd effects which are further compounded by the fact that human eyeballs can't focus on 405nm light so the spot looks pretty funky. The low power was because the final dicro I was using (that was supposed to reflect 650nm red , but transmit 405 violet and 532nm green) was very ill suited to the job and I am loosing about 2/3 of my green and a fair amount of red. Additionally, the super cheep green module I am using (ledshoppe 50mw that costs $25) isn't very happy when at room temperature (it likes to be a bit above room temp) and doesn't perform optimally when heatsinked to the case. None the less it does project a white spot that is on the threshold of painful to look at, and fits in the palm of your hand I am working on making a clone of it that has a more carefully selected green module (possibly on a small tec to keep it happy) and better dicros (I bought a set of ~1" square by 1mm thick filters I plan to dice up off ebay) which should greatly increase the power, and with better glue I should be able to get the alignment a lot better.
I am also build a controller based on an ardiuno microprocessor (for a class at school) that will let me modulate the lasers at a pretty decent speed, and if I get time I will hack in some mirrors to get the projector up and running again.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
I have a pile of dead green pointers too now (the crystals are more or less indestructible, its the diodes that are failure prone) I have been considering rebuilding the, but honestly I can get a brand new one good for 50+mw (the last 2 I ordered were 65mw and 55mw) for $25 why even bother. I might be interested in the dvd-r diodes. Do you know what speed drive they came from? The diodes only start to get powerful when you get to the drives in the 16x-24x zone, a 1x dvdr drive only has a diode good for about 20mw, which at 650nm looks about as bright as .5mw of green...
Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
they were from older drives. i have one here from a 16x burner (suffered a dose of terminal overload but the diode(s) survived) and a more recent one. also have a sony 20x drive to gut. -A
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RGB LASER
A quick back of the napkin calculation says that I have locked the mirrors down to about 2microns 
RGB using PS3 beam splitters glued together edge on *might* fit, just.