cheap 'n' small mirror mounts?

Xer0 said:

@suiraM: lightning fast x-ray grad foil galvos? madness! did you tried it already??

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Hell, no. I've had enough HT for a while. May decide to chip in if someone wants to do a GB on the foil, but that's pretty expensive stuff in small quantities. Has a number of uses, but most are in professional areas, such as etalons, fast mirrors and so forth. I know Stax uses gold coated ones for their earspeakers, which might be a viable source for smaller quantities. Aluminium is more rugged, though.

hehe. the place i will makke my 6 week practice is doing automatic beam alignment. they use piezoelectric actuators and "position sensitive diodes" in their solution

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That works. Piezos are nice in closed loop configuration. Not particularly cheap for a ready made unit, but if this place makes them, you can probably learn how from there.

Xer0 said:

Professional mounts are so damned expensive, and building yourself requires at least an vertical drilling maschine to make straight holes; better a CNC. and its gona dificult to make them real small. and i need realy small ones to make an even smaller complete RGBr module
You know there are lots of chinese companys building cheap showlaser scanners. even if they have crappy stepper motors, at least with RGY they must have dichros and adjustable mounts.

So what about finding a factory which could mass-produce or resell them for us?

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Hi Xer0,

funny you mention that, I am occasionally thinking about something along those lines as well.

I've been working in the laser & optics distribution industry for some time, and I often came across Thorlabs as a cheap manufacturer http://www.thorlabs.com. You can find mounts from them for as low as ~ 40$, which is still an investment when you make it as a hobby.

I also came across scientists who were using lego in their labs as a very cheap way to mount optics (no joking, it seems some labs are really not well funded )

Anyway, back to the point, I was discussing with one of the Thorlabs guy on a exhibition at some point, and he was saying that in his opinion, he'd be relatively easy for someone to get one of those chinese suppliers and resell on US/european market, because there is quite a demand of very cheap and basic optical mounts.

From the experience I have with Chinese suppliers however, the challenge is not to go blind and take on-board just any manufacturers. Some are just crap or scam, and even with well-established one, the quality may vary a lot.

how small do you need the mounts?

fully adjustable and tiny! you can see how small it is, its fits in between the middle part of my finger

RVB said:

Hi Xer0,

I also came across scientists who were using lego in their labs as a very cheap way to mount optics (no joking, it seems some labs are really not well funded )

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Don't go dissing lego. Need is the mother of invention, and lego makes invention easy.

Other great abuses include unused vinyl turntables, pizza serving platters with bearings, icicle sticks, webcams, pipe cutters, sound cards, amplifiers, syringes, pumps, needles, microscope objectives and cover glasses, medusa lamps, wooden train tracks for small kids, active charcoal, radio valves, speaker posts, tool clamps, razors, magnets, plumbing supplies, dome tweeters, inspection mirrors, bismuth, dental mirrors, drill stops, tape, wire, etc.

Sure, you can make hobbyist priced parts. Cast aluminium, steel or plastic, for instance.

But the question is whether there is anything beyond adapters ("heat sinks") that will ever see enough volume to break even. I'd love to split the costs on a laser crystal coating run, for instance, as I really don't need that many pieces myself, but I doubt many would fork over for that sort of thing. Mounts might be a different matter. A microwedge array to join BR or red beams in a grating might also see some volume (easiest way to get huge power levels, save for conical lenses), but I get the impression those who would like that sort of thing have the tools to do most of the job themselves and the finances to get the remainder professionally done.

I'd love to be wrong about it, though.

andy, where'd ya get those and how much? I like those.

home made

^are you selling them Andy?

nope sorry

Tease!!

lol sorry

it was more of a pic to show what can be achieved

But when you dont make them for us, noone can make them for us

i dont make them a friend does

I could probably make you some. How small are we talking? I just made a batch a couple weeks ago. I haven't had time to mess with them yet. I'm thinking about making some out of Corian. I can run the job on my CNC and making some xtra one's is no big deal. If your willing to give me the spec's then I'll draw it up in cad and cut it out. I would need the height, width, aperture hole diameter (for dicro's) and the base dim's. Plus the size and geometry of the hole for mounting to the plate.

These are the one's I just made.

i would be interested to see how well those mounts in the above pic actually work

Remove one screw and add three springs, they will work just dandy for what i need. The thru holes are oversized to allow for adjustment. These are indended to be used as bounce mirror mounts. The insert is sandwiched in between the two pieces, it in-turn, will have the mirror mounted on it. Once I have the inserts built I will post more pics. The project I'm working on needs 10 mirrors.

Chuck

is the offer still good on these ? i just want to know what is the finest thread pitch you can do ?