New to building.. help with a (hopefully) simple project?

So.. i have taken advantage of the Radioshack bankruptcy and bought a bunch of project boxes, capacitors, resistors, etc etc etc. I have two dvdrw drives, and two cd rom drives from old PCs. Where is the best place to find a guide on how to A) set them up in a knife format (correct wording? I want to have all 4 beams combine to get the most power, and know nothing about how to combine outputs the best). and B) how/where do i get a lens that I can focus the output beam with.

First, fill up your profile. This link explain to you about combining laser beam.
If you are from US, get mirrors from this link.

You'll spend more money on the optics, hardware, and other materials required to combine DVD drive diodes, than you'd spend simply buying a more powerful diode.

The brightest single mode RED diode that I'm aware of is this:
https://sites.google.com/site/dtrlp...170mw-635nm-single-mode-laser-diode-hl63133dg
(others may correct me - because I could be wrong)

For $65, that's cheaper than you're going to spend on knife edge optics, adjustable mounts, multiple drivers, etc etc etc.

Knife edging makes sense if you need to exceed the max power of existing diodes, but not if you're trying to catch up to them based on cheaper diodes. Even given an infinite supply of free DVDRW diodes, I think the hardware to combine them into something as bright as the HL63133GD (above) would cost several times the price tag of just buying an HL63133DG.

Careful with those CD diodes. The IR light they create is powerful, yet completely invisible. If you do not already have experience with IR lasers or especially visible lasers, you should consider letting those just sit in a box somewhere.
You'd also have to spend about $50 on a pair of safety glasses that reliably block both IR and red light at the same time.