Another experiment with red and violed

Another experiment with red and violet

Seeing some of the discussions around here about purple lasers mixing red and violet, gave me this insane idea to use a pair of half mangled diodes i had around, for try to build one myself, too (yes, it's your guilty, LOL)

Anyway, having no machines nor other, except hand tools, i had to try it in a different way

The diodes are, one a normal violet from phr803, and a red one i had around unknown, probably from an old dvd burner (have a threshold of 55mA, so probably is not too bad)

suppose you know what's this



Dismantled



and mangled for keep only the cube support and the diodes supports (all the work made with chipper and files )

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then i enlarged the holes at 5.8mm, more or less, and glued the blue diode for have a highness reference for the beam, and temporarily fixed the red one



and then collimate and aligned the red one for the same horizontal alignment of the blue (yes, actually the alignment bank is an id-card with a lens glued on it, and some files used as spacers for keep the diodes aligned in place til the cyan glue become hard )



Actually, i've just finally glued both the diodes in place with thermoconductive resin, so i have to wait at least 24 hours, for the rest of the alignment and for see what it become at the end .

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Well, if i reach to not mangle all the work i made til here, i post something other when i get this one finished (but don't expect a pen type, with this fix, i probably have to put all in a plastic box, at the end ..... even admitting that it work, LOL)).

Nice!
If this works out then that would be great! One thing to worry about, which you probably should have asked before you did this, is collimating the lasers. Red and Violet, being different wavelengths, focus with a lens at different lengths.
Anyways, good luck! Even if you can only focus one laser at a time, it still would be a nice 2-in-1 laser.

Thanks ..... i know about different wawelenghts, but when i tried to do the same with already collimated beams from aixiz modules, it was not working too much, with the cube ..... most part of the blue beam pass through, instead being reflected, probably a collimated beam is too much for the reflective surface of the cube, i don't know ..... and i don't have any beam combiner, actually.

It's because these cubes are polarized. PBS=Polarized beam splitter. The diodes are polarized, you just need to rotate them to get optimal polarization. Also, the different sides of the cube are coated for red and violet respectively, so if you had the cube in the wrong position, then it would not work.

Well, i tried some cubes and in different laser rotation, but the effect don't change too much.

With green 50mW one, the beam just split in two, approximatively 50% of the power, no matter the angle nor the direction ..... but i think i got why ..... cubes are from some dead units, part red/ir and part red/violet, but none of them was made for green ..... probably, the coating of the refraction window (the one inside the cubes) is just not adeguate for manage green wavelenght in full mode, so it just act as a splitter ..... there's just a little changement, rotating the laser, anyway i think i need to find some combiners, and around here don't know where.

Seen some of these discs on ebay, times ago, but the cost was exagerate ..... and now i only see cubes, that i already have some from phr803t units ..... wondering where can be found some of those combiner windows, cause i have an rgb (or better said, rgv ) unit at half mounted, and stopped for the impossibility to find them (aaargh)

Second round, but probably last too .....

i put it in a plastic box and realigned the cube (and had to reverse an old aixiz acrylic lens, for gain 1.5mm, cause otherwise it was too far and not focus properly



As you can see, it focus good enough both the colors, but, first, realign the cube was a real pain you-know-where and took 2 hours, without instruments, and second, due probably to the cube polarization, you can see scattering from the blue and from the red, around the spot, rotated 90% one from the other (both diodes powered around 50mW for the test) .....

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the first pic is focused at 50cm, the second at 10 meters ..... unfortunately, webcam isn't the better for that, it go in saturation too easy ..... and i don't smoke, so no beams

need to decide if finish it, or let drop ..... probably i finish it, but just when i have some free time ..... anyway, it was just another experiment, after all ..... and now i know that this isn't the better way for get a decent combination too

BTW, without open a new thread ..... anyone know where to find beam combiners, without have to sell a lung for get them ? ..... (i mean the windows, not the cubes)

nice, looks like the violet may be overpowering the red. try turning down the mA on the 405nm diode and see if that gives you the results you are looking for. looks like it is pretty close in alignment.

here is some info from jayrobs 7 color that he made. maybe it can help you with basic values.

Power settings and diodes:

I stayed pretty close to the recommendations by rog8811 from the tutorial linked above. Here are my settings...

* Red - Sony/Senkat - 92mA's (measured 42mW's with AixiZ acrylic back opened)
* Blu-ray - PHR - 118mA's (measured 110mW's with AixiZ acrylic back opened)
* O-like 10mW green - I picked the best one I had, which measured 9mW's with a CR123.

I have to stay in experimental mode , cause i don't know anything about the red diode ..... it's a harvested one from an old dvd burner, but have nothing on the body, except a "36-X" written on the back, and i just measured the threshold current, that is 55/58 mA, depend from the temperature ..... knows nothing other about it ..... probably can increase the power of it a bit more than 50mW

I found some datasheets of diodes that, at 55mA threshold, says "max current CW mode, heatsinked, 300mA", but i don't want to risk so much ..... maybe 150ma or few more ..... but my measures are indicative, cause i'm using a shielded photodiode and a DIY circuit for measure them, and you know, they have different responses for different wavelenghts ..... have to found a decent thermopile chip, for build something better as power meter (i'm a maniac of DIY, LOL)