Multiple P.B.S. cubes... 3 joined together.

Can anyone tell me that has any experience in polorized beam splitting/combining cubes that allow two lasers to be joined using one cube if it is possible to use multiple "cubes" to increase the total power and brighness of a laser? I would like to join four 330mw ''long can'' red lasers together using glass lenses through cubes...I want to put 3 cubes in a row with 3 lasers collimated at the sides and one laser shining through all three, so the beams will be alined combining their power and brighness to reach over 1 watt or red laser power with a very small emitter to get a hot and tight beam for burning with each powered seperately. If you can help please do! Also if this idea is not really fesable has anyone used a "cube" to join a red 300mw 650nm with a 1500mw 808nm together to make it hotter and still be able to see the beam just using one cube and how much difference did it make?

It is not possible to use more than one. The trick with these cubes is that they reflect polarized light differently. You can combine a vertically and a horizontally polarized beam, ending up with an output beam that contains both (equal to random polarization for further processing).

You cannot combine beams with random or combined polarization further using these cubes, so the best possible result is twice the power of a single diode (minus some losses).

You may be able to combine 808 and 650 with either a pbs cube or a dichro (if you can find any). I doubt it would be very useful to visualize the focal point though, as these wavelengths are collimated to different points when using the same lens.

you could combine two red diodes with one cube, then combine this red collimated beam with a collimated 808nm beam using a dichro. i guess you would even find something useful in a sled as a dichro! if you combine readily collimated beams, the result should actually work, once you adjusted all the thingies so the beams overlap..
(and yes, i had something in mind similar to this! aim with a low-powered green, and -bam- several watts of IR! hehe)

oh, you surely are aware that all this is absolutely no-go without IR-protective googles and a cam to actually see the IR dot?

manuel

Aiming with green would make the difference in focal lenght even worse though. I suppose it would work on longer range work (like popping balloons from a meter or more), but at close ranges the pinpoints for IR and green would be different.

why focal length? i wouldnt collimate them through one and the same lens (as is necessary in the kes300a combined diode), but produce independent collimated beams and combine them! or do you mean focusing this combined beam to burn? with several watts this shouldnt be necessary.. ;-)

manuel