Using a laser to project a shape

I'm completely new to lasers or laser projection so please excuse if I'm asking daft questions!

As part of my product design university project I am looking for a way to project a shape from a laser beam that will show up on the ground in daylight.

I've got a 1mW 532nm green laser pointer which shows up very well during the day, but obviously that is just the laser dot.

How would I make the laser 'draw' a shape. I understand this is done with moving mirrors and somehow programming a shape to be drawn, is there some kind of off the shelf device for doing this?

What effect would this have on the beam intensity?

I know another option is using a sense to create a shape from the beam, where can I get hold of such a lense? I am from the UK.

Are there any websites that may be useful to me?

Can anyone give me some advice?

Cheers,
Jack

You can cut a hole in red paper and put it over 20 or 10x binoculars and put the laser in the part that you look through and the paper on the other side of the binos. Trust me those words/ shapes will go very far at night. Also your laser is likely not 1 mw.

it will expand the beam 10 or 20 times and reducude divergence by the same amount.

Check out Photonlexicon.com - That forum is more geared towards laser projection and should be able to point you in the right direction.

For visibility during the day you would need a lot more than 1mW - It's hard to tell how much exactly you need as there are a lot of variables such as distance from projector to surface, surface material and the lighting conditions. You can buy off the shelf units or build one yourself, that depends on how technically inclined you are and how much you have to spend.

To project an image using a laser we normally use a pair of galvanometers with mirrors on the ends (Or Galvos for short) - Like this: laser galvanometer - Google Search - Usually driven by two amplifiers, one for X, one for Y, with signals usually produced using a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) and a computer. Galvos today are typically capable of scanning at at least 30,000 points per second at 8 degrees or more.

jb93 said:

I'm completely new to lasers or laser projection so please excuse if I'm asking daft questions!

As part of my product design university project I am looking for a way to project a shape from a laser beam that will show up on the ground in daylight.

I've got a 1mW 532nm green laser pointer which shows up very well during the day, but obviously that is just the laser dot.

How would I make the laser 'draw' a shape. I understand this is done with moving mirrors and somehow programming a shape to be drawn, is there some kind of off the shelf device for doing this?

What effect would this have on the beam intensity?

I know another option is using a sense to create a shape from the beam, where can I get hold of such a lense? I am from the UK.

Are there any websites that may be useful to me?

Can anyone give me some advice?

Cheers,
Jack

Click to expand...

Why not just use one of the new teeny digital projectors? That's essentially all you're making.