Ehgemus fan thread, post your photo's of the host he built for you.

[paul1598419]

I'll be looking forward to seeing the new photos when you finish your mods. I'd rep you, but it won't let me right now.

 

[GSS]

Yes, he orders from an established company through the mail, or via ebay. I know that much, but he may have other local sources too. The hosts he offers on the forum are always the best deals, often in the range of 40-120 dollars but I'll be damned if I can catch some of them in time. I'm checking the BST section twice a day every day to look and see if he has put something up.

Im working part time now, well very very part time, mostly health related, but ive been a screw machinist for over 20 years. My machines of choice are Brown & Sharpes single spindle with a 6 or 8 position indexing turret, nothing fancy mostly cam driven. These screw machines are best made for 1000 to 10000 piece runs as itts a single spindle. I guess the point im getting at is I go in as needed to work for a man who I set up and run round knurled brass inserts with an inside thread that go into custom transformors for mounts that are filled with epoxy. The electrical engineering company I make them for is actually owned by my brother in law started by his father. "Its a weird set up I know" but it works and I know first hand what is the best way as I once worked at my in laws company. The owner charges .86 cents a piece for these and we get these brass rods at 12ft. I get about 250 pieces from each bar. I havent been in the material ordering part for well over 10 years and the man im working for is the cheapest man ive ever worked for or even possibly known. I keep mum an to myself and dont take any extra stock home or even use his equipment on my own time. I just do my job an get out as it helps family. As I grind basicly my own form tools and the tooling for this job isnt all that much as brass machines like butter. The long long boring story im getting to is if you do the math and what the owner makes on each bar of stock, Ehgemus is a man truly in the gift of love of his labor.I just cant express it better. Red Cowboy I was looking at that sight and for a 12inch long 1 1/4 bar of round AL at $11.00 thats only maby 7 to 8 heatsinks.......You would think having access to an electrical eng firm I would be way further along on these lasers but its not their specialty

 

[Encap]

Ehgemus hosts are some really inspired and beautiful mechanical art works.

LPF members are very fortunate to have his talents and passion for making host available to them, especially 1 piece at a time for very reasonable prices considering the amount of work and skill required to create them.

That new one Ricker received is great---really nice work.

Alaskan--would be awesome with a BE-I agree.

The beautiful host Ehgemus did for Moe Ron is outstanding with the BE.

 

[Alaskan]

Another extraordinary piece of art from Ehgemus

Here's a beam shot, not outstandingly bright at this power, but it has great divergence! It would stand out far brighter if we didn't have a cloud base above with all of the city lights reflecting off of it.

He added an adapter to allow a JetLasers beam expander to attach by simply sliding it into the end and tightening down a set screw. If I have another one made I will do it differently though, it really needs two set screws to secure the beam expander, one at 90 degrees and one at 180 degrees, otherwise the expander has a little slop and can wiggle around, you can tighten it all you want with one set screw, but at 90 degrees from it the whole expander can move around as if on a pivot point for one axis.

Another thing I learned is that these JL beam expanders probably cannot be used with multimode diodes without cutting a portion of the beam off, I tried it with a NDG7475T 1 watt+ 520nm laser diode and it cuts over 1/3 of the beam off, too much. From this result, it is my belief the only thing a JL beam expander can be used with and have a large enough output aperture to keep from masking or cutting off a portion of the beam is either a DPSS laser which has a very small beam width, or a single mode laser diode which also has a small beam, multimodes just have too wide an output beam. I guess I should have figured this out with the math, I'm estimating the beam width of my NDG7475T is about 3.5mm, maybe more, if you expand that ten times larger, a lens with about 25mm of clear aperture won't be big enough to let all of the expanded beam through. Because of this I installed a single mode PL520 green laser diode which better matches the output lens of the expander and puts out close to 100mw prior to the expander, but even some of it is getting cut off, not too much of a problem, I'm estimating 95 percent or more gets through.

One interesting thing about that particular diode is I've been running them without drivers and so far, no failures. The voltage of two 18650 batteries in series is just right to push this diode hard, but not so much that it kills the diode, at least, not mine. DTR did some tests with this particular diode and found the same result, if you over current it a bit too far, it gets dim, but comes back when the current is reduced to normal again.

 

[Isaac Clarke]

yes i'm getting Ehgemus to make me something out of silver!!! and i agree those O$ram Diodes are hard to kill, compare to N!chia diodes which can be push for more power but nowhere close to O$ram durability. German thrive for durable stuff while Japanese go for Innovation.

i had a Bike made in Germany and man after a freak accident. the car was in pieces while the bike was in 1 piece( no damage).

anyone here with enough money to do a torture test of n!chia vs O$ram direct drive diode torture test?

 

[Alaskan]

OMG, you are going to do it! I bet Harold is happy too, silver, wow, probably will be the only one in the world made from solid silver I bet.

DTR did some tests, here's a link to his results for the PL520, but a lot of his photo's on this page no longer work: https://sites.google.com/site/dtrlpf/home/diodes/pl520-520nm-laser-diode

 

[Isaac Clarke]

yep and as suggested by another member i might ask Harold to make silver module as well!!! Now i'm just waiting for my silver to be made and then i send express post to Harold.
even after that i might send it off to members to do a performance test against copper module.
---------people asked why i wanted a silver host, my answer was i went as far as building my own laser why not make it one of a kind and unique.

 

[Shakenawake]

He added an adapter to allow a JetLasers beam expander to attach by simply sliding it into the end and tightening down a set screw. If I have another one made I will do it differently though, it really needs two set screws to secure the beam expander, one at 90 degrees and one at 180 degrees, otherwise the expander has a little slop and can wiggle around, you can tighten it all you want with one set screw, but at 90 degrees from it the whole expander can move around as if on a pivot point for one axis.

Another thing I learned is that these JL beam expanders probably cannot be used with multimode diodes without cutting a portion of the beam off, I tried it with a NDG7475T 1 watt+ 520nm laser diode and it cuts over 1/3 of the beam off, too much. From this result, it is my belief the only thing a JL beam expander can be used with and have a large enough output aperture to keep from masking or cutting off a portion of the beam is either a DPSS laser which has a very small beam width, or a single mode laser diode which also has a small beam, multimodes just have too wide an output beam. I guess I should have figured this out with the math, I'm estimating the beam width of my NDG7475T is about 3.5mm, maybe more, if you expand that ten times larger, a lens with about 25mm of clear aperture won't be big enough to let all of the expanded beam through. Because of this I installed a single mode PL520 green laser diode which better matches the output lens of the expander and puts out close to 100mw prior to the expander, but even some of it is getting cut off, not too much of a problem, I'm estimating 95 percent or more gets through.

One interesting thing about that particular diode is I've been running them without drivers and so far, no failures. The voltage of two 18650 batteries in series is just right to push this diode hard, but not so much that it kills the diode, at least, not mine. DTR did some tests with this particular diode and found the same result, if you over current it a bit too far, it gets dim, but comes back when the current is reduced to normal again.

if he'd have saved the dimensions of my BE adapter he could have tapped a focus adapter for you like he did for me.

those JL expanders can capture all the light from the bad divergence multi modes. you just cant put the beam into the expander focused to infinity, you have to make it so that the beam is narrowed by defocusing some. the expander has it's own focus, and can then be reset to infinity. you can tell by the beam coming out when it starts to clip the sides. the best combination of power and divergence is achieved when the beam fills as much of the large lens as possible without clipping the sides, wear safety glasses while adjusting it. it will form a bar in the middle of the expander if it is properly centered and resemble a "-" sign in the center of the circle. note that the beam will clip the edges of the inside of the expander before it fills the big lens, because the lens' diameter is a bit bigger than the cavity in the expander

 

[Alaskan]

I was adjusting it to try to get the bar to become narrower, so it wouldn't cut off some of the beam, but I couldn't adjust it enough to do so as I was trying for as close to infinity focus as I could get. I will try again to see if maybe I can get it to come in for me.

Edit, I just understood what you are saying, adjust the G2 lens, in my case, so the beam is focused closer into a narrower beam, then adjust the expander to focus to infinity, aha...

 

[RedCowboy]

That's a beauty.

Yes edge clipping is a problem, I still have not used my beam shaping optics other than playing with them, the concave makes a line like our Linos convex lenses we bought from Sam.

In time we will get it worked out, just about the time the next round of diodes are out, lol.

p.s. I hope media units evolve single mode high power light source diodes in the near future, heck I would be thrilled with a 2.5 watt 405

 

[Shakenawake]

I was adjusting it to try to get the bar to become narrower, so it wouldn't cut off some of the beam, but I couldn't adjust it enough to do so as I was trying for as close to infinity focus as I could get. I will try again to see if maybe I can get it to come in for me.

Edit, I just understood what you are saying, adjust the G2 lens, in my case, so the beam is focused closer into a narrower beam, then adjust the expander to focus to infinity, aha...

aye, and center it too. on mine there is a little wiggle as the entire weight is held by the g lens in the module, but it's not difficult to hold steady while using

 

[Ricker]

That's a beauty.

Yes edge clipping is a problem, I still have not used my beam shaping optics other than playing with them, the concave makes a line like our Linos convex lenses we bought from Sam.

In time we will get it worked out, just about the time the next round of diodes are out, lol.

p.s. I hope media units evolve single mode high power light source diodes in the near future, heck I would be thrilled with a 2.5 watt 405

I was just saying the same thing a couple nights ago, RC. I would kill for a single mode 2.5W 405. That thing would cut people in half so precise that an hour later they would notice because their top half would slide off. :eg:

 

[Alaskan]

You could PBS cube combine two BDR-209 405nm violet single mode diodes together to produce somewhere around 1.5 watts, maybe bit more. Even then it won't have a very bright beam or spot for that matter, that wavelength is only 1 percent as bright to the human eye compared to the same power of 532nm green, but it will burn like the dickens.

900mW 405nm Blu Ray BDR 209 Laser Diode in Copper Module w Leads G 2 Glas Lens | eBay

Google DTR-LPF or go to his link in my signature for a better price.

 

[Alaskan]

Here's another thread on one of his hosts: http://laserpointerforums.com/f40/pltb-450nm-ehgemus-host-96171.html#post1399282

 

[Misterplw]

Here's another thread on one of his hosts: http://laserpointerforums.com/f40/pltb-450nm-ehgemus-host-96171.html#post1399282

I got a host too made by Ehgemus. What is that little peice for that is leaning against the heat sink at the top of the host? Mine came with one too but I'm not totally sure what it's for.

 

[Alaskan]

Are you talking about the round piece? It's the focus ring, one end of the lens screws into the diode holder and the focus ring screws onto the end of the lens so you can focus it. It isn't needed, but makes the host look a lot nicer, plus you won't be so likely to burn your fingers using that to turn the lens.