Interested in Beam Expanders ???

Thank you, I have cut and paste' to a Word doc to study this further.

Another (free) software to use for an optical (telescope/expander) design
Psst! homepage

It has more features like a laser resonator design.

Will the optics in a rifle gun scope be usable for a beam expander?

Ehgemus said:

Will the optics in a rifle gun scope be usable for a beam expander?

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Experiment.

steve001 said:

Experiment.

Click to expand...

I'm sure somebody can tell me if it's possible before I start tearing into gun scopes.

Reason why I suggested it because Walmart has gun scopes for about 11 bucks. Being as cheap as they are they probably have plastic lenses in them anyway.

Ehgemus said:

Will the optics in a rifle gun scope be usable for a beam expander?

Click to expand...

Should work. Just remember that the beam will not expand very quickly due to how the gun optics are made. Also plastic will get you a good bit off power loss if it's uncoated

You can find some coated optics, glass lenses on the cheap from scopes. Best place for sampling would be a gun show. They aren't what they used to be. Now they're nothing more than 50% extended flea market full of alibaba.com dealers selling swords, optics, etc. 40% retail gun and gun part sales, 10% collectors.

You can find the optics for much less online, but going to a show will give you a good means to sample different brands and models. Barska often sells cheap optics with decent lenses.

The lenses are usually nice, but the assembly they come in is cheaply done and they often can't handle the kick of anything more than a .22 That's why they're typically cheap in price.

Watch out for small telescopes which turn the image back to the normal orientation, or back to upright, I believe most of them will have prisms in them which will cause extra loss you don't need in an expander.

That would be awesome if you started making these. I've always wanted one, but they're hard to find for the types of builds I have. I can't help much, but this got me thinking of the possibilities. You could make hosts with integrated beam expanders specially designed for each laser! :drool: