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FrozenGate by Avery

MrCrouse Mace of Doom Host with 500mm Telephoto Lens Converted to a Beam Expander

Joined
Jan 29, 2014
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Here's a MrCrouse Mace of Doom Small-Sun ZY-A630 flashlight host with a shortened 70mm Kimunor 500mm telephoto lens modified into a beam expander attached. The 500mm telephoto assembly is about half of its original length by unscrewing two sections (one tube on the input and one tube from the output) to make it shorter and the output PCX was then by necessity replaced with a shorter focal length lens, but it works great! As an awesome bonus, the adjustable aperture iris inside removes the wide optical artifacts which look like wings too, another bonus is the diameter of my Mace of Doom heat sink is an exact fit to the ID of the telephoto tube. I am very happy with this mod due to the reduced divergence of a ordinarily high divergence multimode 6 watt NUBM44 445nm diode to better than that of a 532nm DPSS laser, as well as the beam being cleaned up so well.

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The telephoto tube could be left its original length and work without replacing its lens, but I found the tube needed to be a few inches longer to be able to focus to infinity, so I shortened it instead and used another much shorter focal length 70mm diameter lens, which I seated deeper inside the tube against the end of the flair in the tube where it transitions down to a smaller neck. Because the end tube with the original lens holder was removed, I had to put one wrap of electrical tape around the edges of my lens and then just tightly push it into the tube. Alternatively, I suppose I could just put some rubber cement around the edges of the lens, or better yet, find a rubber ring which can compress a little and insert it down the tube against the lens to keep it in place.

To explain how this works, all I do is adjust my G2 lens on the end of the pointer heat sink out of focus enough that it puts out a wide spot which when going through the PCX lens on the end of the tube collimates it to infinity focus, when adjusted with the zoom. There is only one lens inside the telephoto tube, just the one on the end I replaced with a shorter focal length one. This isn't a classical expander setup which uses a fixed focal length concave expander lens coupled with a PCX lens on the end, you don't need to use an expander lens when you can just adjust your G2 (three element lens, or what have you) out of focus so the beam expands larger and larger as it travels forward from it. When adjusted out of focus, the G2 lens is doing the exact same thing a concave lens does and because I can adjust how much the beam spreads, this allows me to make the spot size match the diameter of the collimating lens on the end of the tube. When used this way, think of your G2 as acting like an adjustable focal length concave expander lens, which of course it isn't, but in effect it works that way.

The ebay link, below, shows a 500mm telephoto lens which looks much like the same as the model I have, there are others much like the one I used which are near duplicates to be found on ebay under various manufacture names which would also work, but some of them also have a small lens inside near the input (camera end) which would need to be removed, but most are very simple and only have one lens in them. The thing which makes them work for us is if you defocus the output of your laser pointer lens you can adjust its spot size to match the aperture or output diameter of the collimation lens and use the telephoto units built in zoom telescopic focus mechanism to be able to reach infinity focus. Since the Doom of Mace heat sink has a clear path to slide in or out of the tubes ID, this gives some extra focal length adjustment play (in addition to the zoom focus built into the tube) which makes finding the right focal length PCX lens much easier.

Kimunor 500mm Telephoto Lens for Canon Pentax Minolta Mounts | eBay

Edit: I bought this Kimunor at the above link and it did not have the same construction as the one used with my Mace of Doom host and the tube on the end did not have a seam to unscrew the end lens assembly and hood from the focuser as well as another lens inside the tube just before the iris, seems there are variations with their 500mm units. Not that one this won't work with some modifications to it.

And another one which looks like it might be nearly the same: http://www.ebay.com/itm/five-star-1-8-f-500-mm-manual-focus-lens-/181855278267

Below, although the photo on the left is a little out of focus, it shows the terminus spot when the iris adjusted to remove the wings, the right side photo shows how terrible the wing artifacts are when they are not clipped by the iris.

wings1.jpg

Above, even though the photo's are not identically centered, I think you can see there isn't any splatter hitting the house on the left when the iris is adjusted to cut off the wings from leaving the tube. I have checked with a laser power meter to see the difference in output power between having the wings cut-off or allowing them to leave and the difference is less than 10 percent, not a small amount, but then not a huge amount either and the beam looks oh so much better when clipped.

IMG_3769%202.jpg

Above, 5+ watts of output from a NUBM44 445nm laser diode with the wide side of the beam facing the camera. When this photo was taken the northern lights were out fairly brightly, nice photo, but I forgot to close the iris to cut off some of the wings you can see as a haze in the photo near the end of the beam! The output is still more of a rectangle than a spot, due to being a multimode diode, but it looks great to me. I am not using the full possible expansion of my 70mm PCX lens, more like 40-50mm when the iris is adjusted to remove the wings. As you can see, the northern lights were out that night :)

Edit: For those of you who are also interested in using this setup for burning:

The closest I can adjust the focus into a fine spot which is only 2-3 mm wide for burning with this setup where the expander is located on the heat sink, as shown in the photo, is about 7-10 meters, when the zoom is adjusted as close as I can get the focal point to be, but if I move the telephoto assembly/tube to the far end of the heat sink, about an inch and a half further out, I can focus to a fine 2mm spot much closer to only 3 feet away.

If I move the tube as close to the host as I can get it to where about 1 inch of gap remains (which is where it bottoms out against a collar inside the tube), I can adjust the focal point to be much further away, perhaps 100 feet or more away (yet to be tested at night) but then I cannot reach infinity focus when solely adjusting the zoom collar on the tube, I would need to reposition the tube to be able to do so. The good news is the tube is tight enough against the heat sink that you can just use the pointer this way without needing to permanently secure it to the heat sink, but in time I expect the uber shiny finish on your heat sink will be removed sliding it in and out like that.

Also, when the focus is adjusted close in, far before infinity focus is reached, you cannot get rid of the wings, I can only use the iris to block the wings when close to infinity focus with one exception, when the tube is pulled all of the way out close to the end of the heat sink, then the iris will remove the wings, I don't understand why yet. If anyone else wants to duplicate this on their own Mace of Doom, the end focus cap must be removed first, otherwise it can block the expanding beam when adjusted out of focus to have the spot match the diameter of the collimating lens on the end.

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e8eedcfc-1667-47a6-b08a-2f2a571c105d.jpg
The OD of my Mace of Doom heat sink (unpainted aluminum) is slightly less than 47mm wide, or 1.85 inches diameter and has about 2.5 inches or 63mm of length exposed to slide the tube around on. Having a 6 watt output laser diode in a host which uses 18650 batteries is pushing them hard, every time I use this laser for a few minutes the batteries are always draining fairly quickly. While a couple of these batteries will work and last long enough to get your heat sink quite warm to the point maybe you ought to give it a rest anyway, I recommend using this diode in a host with no less than 26650 batteries, 32650's even better, or you will be swapping the batteries out before the next time you use it again for full output, I was surprised to find my batteries had drained to 2.7 volts each the last time I used this laser, far lower than these batteries probably should be allowed to drain down to.
 
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Looks good! Way better than when you stuck a beam expander on it with electrical tape haha. With a host the size of that host+expander you could easily add corrective optics and a smaller expander. Maybe a project for the future?

Also, how are the reflections on the inside? Is the lens AR coated?
 
Thanks for sharing your continuing optical experimentation. It is inspiring.

+ rep when the system lets me.

Ed
 
thanks guys, I bought this thing a year ago, last night I finally figured out a way to use it. Yep, I was thinking the same thing, a small ledge fastened in front of the beam output on the end of the heat sink and a 6X cylinder lens pair would help tame this diodes rectangular output to be more round. The shorter 70mm dia. FL lens I used which worked so well for the reduced length of the tube happened to be AR coated in the vis range, another happy aspect of the parts I could throw together to make this work.
 
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ill say it again. absolutely beautiful pictures and awesome beam expander
 
Took another photo tonight with a low light (night camera) application for my iphone, it takes better photo's of the beam, but is over powered by it enough I can tell the light gain is adjusted way down. I don't have this much of a wing problem with my other diodes, just that the NUBM44 diode output is so wide they are difficult to deal with:

Here's a photo with the iris completely open showing the haze around the tip caused by the wings:

445nm.jpg


Here's a photo with the iris completely closed (well, obviously not completely closed, as closed as it will go), the iris takes care of removing the wings very nicely! Only thing is, if you look at the base of the beam near the lens, you can see that the whole profile has been narrowed. I've tested the power out with and without the iris closed and the amount of power lost is about 10 percent. To be able to remove this much of the wings, the telephoto assembly must be positioned in just the right spot on the heat sink, or the iris doesn't cut enough of the beam edges off to remove them.

IMG_3815_1.jpg
 
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Nice looking build.
I wonder how tight you could get your spot after a pair of 6x correctives with the beam expander.
 
Will have to get a metal bracket made to put those optics inside, once I get them. I'm out of here for a week or so, I have a trip to go on this morning to a remote radar site here in Alaska. Cheers!

Edit: back from my trip, tried to use my concave and convex cylinder expander lens pair to widen the slow axis of my NDG7475T 520nm green laser diode and found it won't work with the unusual beam expander method I use with a defocused G2 lens. For the cylinder lens pair to work for me, I must first focus to infinity and then shoot through these little lenses with a <5mm beam width... Then, expand with a concave lens before collimation with a PCX lens on the end. If I used a normal beam expander then these lenses would work, but not the way I make my beam expander pointers.
 
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Hi,
I have a 500mm coming to build up my Mace of Doom with a BE. Thanks for the links Buddy,I have a Sinner Cypreus3 with his BE I'm hooked on it .
Rich:)
 
Sweet ass build bro right on! I know you have been playing around with home made BE and you must be quite pleased. Great job and thanks for sharing these with us. Rep for you!!!

Edited to add- I noticed you removed your moon divergence factoid from your sig. Aww man, that was the coolest sig on here. Can you send me a copy of that?
 
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Thanks, I edited the first post about the Kuminor 500mm telephoto lens, I bought the one I linked to in the post and it was constructed a bit differently for where the tube seams were and had an extra lens inside the tube! I think it can still be modified to work, just will take more work to do so.

On the signature, yea, I removed it so I could add some other links, there is a limit to the amount of text one can put in their signature, good thing too! I'd use too much.

Here's what you are looking for:

Interesting fact: A laser with 1 mRad of divergence will produce a beam which is 1/10th of a mile wide 100 miles away. At that mRad, a laser beam which reaches the sun will cover close to 10% its diameter, the moon close to 10% its diameter. For 2 mRad, double these figures and so on for wider divergences. Easy online spot size calculator at: pseudonomen137's JScript Diameter Calculator
 


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