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40w laser idea using Cassegrain telescope?

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blue laser research

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Needing some answers to an idea I had.

From the time I watched the first terminator, I've thought of a 40w portable laser.

Just wondering if I could make the below idea work, or if the wavelengths would cancel each other out.

Take a 90mm makutov telescope. Build a heatsink in front of the corrective plate full of 445nm lasers.

Diagram_sub_aperture_maksutov_cassegrain.svg


In theory I assume if you used 2w diodes you could build a very wide 2w beam, but I want to combine them to increase output, not create a wider burning beam.

Would it be possible to combine them to a 40watt beam without cancellation of the wavelengths?

What if you used laser diodes of different colors and combined them at the focal point of the telescope?

Just some ideas from an amateur. Seems like 14 445nm modules could put out 40 watts and there would be enough room to mount them in front of a small makutov, just not sure how the beams would interact with each other.
 





Search for how to combine beams. There a good guide on how to, and the limits of, combining beams. From what i understand, you can't get no where near that power with a multidiode setup. At least not without creating a large beam. The only laser close to that, that i have seen, is a pulsed YAG laser. Search for YAG ray gun.
 
40W? Does it have to be visible? If not, a CO2 laser is going to be the way to go here.
 
If you were able to combine 14ea 445 laser diodes into one beam like you are hoping you would only end up with about 21W.

Go for the C02 as it's your best bet to reach 40W
 
Flaminpyro said:
If you were able to combine 14ea 445 laser diodes into one beam like you are hoping you would only end up with about 21W.

Go for the C02 as it's your best bet to reach 40W
Click to expand...

So the idea does have some merit? Just there would be around 50% cancellation of power? Still seems like a cost effective way of combining a lot of beams easily.
 
blue laser research said:
If I am not mistaken the way the mirrors are aligning those beams is no different than what my telescope idea would do?
Click to expand...
Not quite. Those knife-edge arrays are effectively stacking multiple beams side-by-side to make "one" big beam, whereas the beams in your telescope would only really meet in the slightest at the focal point "F", and then diverge rather rapidly from that point. The telescope would never give any real or seeming "merging" of the individual beams without additional optics. For your idea, you would be far better off using a knife-edge array than a telescope, though squeezing 40W of 445/450nm blue into a hand-held device is going to be very difficult, if not nigh on impossible. If you were to use a CO2 laser as already mentioned above by others, then you would be more likely to be able to pack 40W of power into a semi-portable unit, though the light from it would not be 445nm blue, but a rather invisible, and very dangerous, might I add, 10.6μm infra-red beam.
 
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Wouldn't gold-coated mirrors be required for CO2, with ZnSe lenses at the eyepiece-turned-output-lens? $$$$

...

Even if you were to run the light from all those 445nm diodes through the telescope, would you not end up with a set of diverging beams at the eyepiece?

T.
 
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Gold mirrors are probably better, but regular mirrors work fine for bouncing CO2 beams. Just make sure it's a front surface mirror or you could shatter it from the 10.6um light being absorbed by the glass.
 
blue laser research said:
If I am not mistaken the way the mirrors are aligning those beams is no different than what my telescope idea would do?
Click to expand...

You're interpreting a 2D drawing as a 2D object. It's a cross-section of a 3D object. It does not work the way you think it does.
 
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