cheap 'n' small mirror mounts?

He Guys,

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?

If you want to make small a small RGB, just hard glue the optics in place. Then you don't have to worry about the mounts drifting out of alignment over time, and its way cheaper here is mine

hard glue? but... how i adjust them first?

You use an external mount to get the optic where you want it, then add glue. Super glue (CA) + an accelerator (available at a hobby store for pretty cheep) works quite well to give a very rigid fixture, or if you have the tools UV cure epoxy is the way to go. This is how most commercial lasers are made, because you only need to buy the precision stage once so the laser cost goes way down.

So you use such a thins like a "third hand" or the 3D holder from qualifound?
then starting the laser, adjusting, and gluing it?
i thought you must hold in in place with a pincete until the glue dries

You do have to be careful to keep everything in place while the glue dries, which is why its good to use UV cure glue. You tweak everything in place and then shine the curing light on it, and bam solidly mounted optic. Although I will warn you, its tricky business keeping everything aligned, you have to get a decent low-shrink blue, and a right platform to mount it on. I have a post with my process here

Xer0 said:

He Guys,

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?

Click to expand...

here is a wide selection. These are not damned expensive. and you have many choices all in stock!

http://www.microlaserlabs.com/index.php?cPath=44&osCsid=a7c6606edc5ce7a0cc6fc32140d2437b

I got a special sort of cyanoacryalte glue on the industry fair currently in hannover!

It comes with a granulate of sodium glas pearls which react to solid stuff when dropped with the glue. i asked the seller if i could align mirrors with it and he showed it is no problem with even if they are tilted to the sides or standing on just one corner. we tested it with a square piece of plastik and it worked good.

So if this will do for me with PBS' or dichros i will recommend the producer here

Hello!
I have brassmounts here, ultrastable and very small!
The size is: 23*21*10mm.
PM me if someone is interested. I have much more than on the pic.
Sorry for the bad picture!
Greets,
P

Hard mounting is generally the better option in the long run. I have had some success with aligning things with molten indium foil (hoping to find a more useful form soon) and an external mount. Gives good heat conduction, solid mounting and so forth.

Another point is that adjustable options can be pretty precise if you have a small microcontroller to perform corrections on the fly. Mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, thermal, magnetic, or even electrostatic... they all work for their applications. The issue with automatic alignment is usually to find a suitable means to obtain some precise feedback. Gratings or prisms are neat for rotation, mirrors or right angle prisms for interferometry, lens setups for distances... a bit of ingenuity and you can get away with one CCD chip for a bunch of sensors, though it may take some smoke (at first) and mirrors.

If you want to build a tiny galvo, consider buying some X-ray grade mylar foil with aluminium coating. It isn't cheap, but if you are comfortable with using a very high voltage driver or limited angle of deflection, then you can probably open up some previously unexplored avenues that way. The potential (pardon the pun) speed and linearity of the deflection with a good driver is insane, and the volume can be tiny.

The same foil/film, sans coating, has some interesting uses as an etalon, too, by the way. Or to hold samples for microscopy with one of those scopes that fail to fully compensate for the cover glass. Beam splitting is also kind of neat, since there is almost no displacement of the beam (3µm or so). Just make sure you obtain X-ray grade film (2-3µm, laser grade flatness), not something meant to be stuck onto food or whatever (200-500µm, rough, flatness worse than 1 lambda).

I don't know if this will help or not but if you want to look at my thread (canon/savin laser assemblies) in the "General" section, I have can get my hands on some pre-made/pre-adjusted laser assemblies with polygon mirrors w/motors. All you'd need to do is remove the 5mW IR lasers and use the heatsink provided. The mirror is perfectly aligned with the laser already so it could be a nice solution for you. If not, no problem Just trying to help where I can.

If nothing else, at least it could be a nice pre-made enclosure that is guaranteed to be dust free (no dust will touch your laser's emitting end or the mirrors/optics in this assembly with the included screws and protective seals.

Best of all, these assemblies are free. You just cover shipping via whatever carrier you want. I can't sell/make money on these (reasons provided in that thread) so you pick the carrier and pm me with shipping instructions. I'll do my best to get them in the mail to you in under a week (remember, I'm not running this as a business. I fix copiers for a living and this is just me taking parts out of 'trashed' or 'worn out' copiers on my free time. I figure if someone can get some use out of these parts, isn't that better than throwing them out and adding to the waste in a junk yard?

thanks bschott! i will have a look in your thread. could be usefull

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

Phillip... nice mirror holders. but i just cant imagine how to adjust them :-? tell me

Hello!
You have 4 screws to adjust them. And you can fineadjust it a x and y.
It is the "clamp" princibe, with one screw you press the holder, with the other you pull it. If you adjust your holder right, have some clamp on the 2 srews and becouse of it´s design (complete out of one brassblock) it wouldn´t disadjust.
Greets

could you make a detail shot or video? ;D i still dont understand it how to tilt/pan/rotate the mirror

and price for 2 or 3 of them?

Hello!
I haven´t a good cam, only the cam where I shot the pics, and you see how bad the quality is.
But if you have the holders on your table you see how it works.
18€/Pc. for 1-10pcs.
Greets

this price is aceptable i will keep you in mind when the build phase starts!