How is my alignment?

Hello all,

As I've said before in previous threads, I'm building a RGB scanner. I tested the alignment of my lasers out today under fog and here are the results. How is the alignment? I think it is fairly good considering all I used is glue... I will add the galvos and the drivers soon to control each laser.

Note: I can't do all the color combinations because I still need to add and adjust the drivers. I'm using an adjustable power supply to power the lasers right now. I also took care to aim the laser at either the roof top or the forest behind.

Red + Green (Yellow)
I took a lot of yellow shots because it is my favorite color. Too bad there aren't cheap high powered yellows.

Shot 1


Shot 2


Shot 3


Shot 4


Green + Blue
Shot 1


Shot 2


Green
It is very cold outside so the green grew dimmer and dimmer until I took this picture of it. I guess DPSS lasers are fairly temperature sensitive.


Red
The red 110mW 635nm Mits however loved the cold temperatures and is the brightest I've seen.


:thanks: for reading!

It's pretty hard to evaluate the alignment from those pictures, just as it's probably pretty hard for you to determine it yourself. Definitely good for glue though.

You might want to invest in some adjustable mounts. They can either be the "flexure" type or those nice 2-3 axis screw-adjusted types. Sometimes the alignment can go "off" because of bumps or other issues, so being able to perform minor adjustments helps. MI-lasers sells a nice assortment of parts for a good price.

I've never used those adjustable mounts but have heard that they're very useful. Do you glue your dichro/mirror to the mount or something?

I'm impressed. Your yellow, from the pix looks decent. only in your last pic can you see red and green in your yellow. Like bb said, consider some adjustable mounts. glue will warm up and eventual lose its adhesion.

Michael.

Apocalypse said:

I've never used those adjustable mounts but have heard that they're very useful. Do you glue your dichro/mirror to the mount or something?

Click to expand...

Yeah, it depends on the mount though. If it's a flexure mount you definitely glue it on. With those 2-3 axis screw-based mounts, you might be able to find a holder for the dichro/mirror so you don't need to fix it to the mount itself.

I got 2x of the flexure mounts from Lasever for $20 each, and also picked up some 2-axis kinematic mounts off ebay for the same price (I was lucky!). Sometimes you can find a good deal on them.

The flexure mounts are also used by people to combine beams in a knife-edge array (putting beams side-by side to make a bigger beam).