589nm PGL-C teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

[ultimatekaiser]

Finally got started. Time to put my money where my mouth is...Getting awesome at taking apart these PGL-C hosts. came apart in about half an hour, quick, easy, and painless.

It initially was a decent dot, but came from the factory where the beam was slightly clipping the aperture, so I decided to try moving it more toward the center. I've had good luck with my patience so far, and it is going well so far.

Will update this post as I progress.

and now for the good part....Captioned Pictures!

Inside this beauty with the collimating lens removed:

Collimating lens on mount, the IR filter on this one suprisingly isn't on the module, but slanted on the back of the collimation mount kinda haphazardly...

Front:

Rear:

Module:

Cover removed, foreward view...the OC like all the yellow passes is a beautiful violet color when looked through. though of course that's not visible while it is running.

Sloppy original output:

808nm Coupler:

Lasing medium:
front:

back/underside:

As you can see, this crystal is not two Nd:YAG crystals stuck together as far as I can tell. It is identical to the one that was in my PGL-A...its a odd minty color.

KTP in its mount:

Top View:

Since I re-aligned it while it was running, it was obviously warm while I did the alignment, so now it takes a few moments to warm up to reach full power when I turn it on. once it warms up however, it seems comparable to where it was before. I may tinker with it more another time, but for now I'm happy with the way it is. I'll add pics of the after/result soon. The beam is also MUCH straighter...almost perfect, maybe off by only a couple degrees at most.

 

[Flaminpyro]

Re: the 589nm re-alignment that everyone seems to want me to do

Good deal, there are a few of us out here very interested in this so keep us posted

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Re: the 589nm re-alignment that everyone seems to want me to do

Yeah, this one's definitely more finicky than the others were. its quite a bit more sensitive to movements, and requires a fan and a lot more finesse. this thing was literally coming out the OC nearly sideways, maybe 20+ degress, and the whole rest of the optics are in at odd angles and such to compensate. It's all fudged up. just started from scratch and got it lasing again. TEM00 is much harder to get and keep than with the others due to the heavy thermals.

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Re: the 589nm re-alignment that everyone seems to want me to do

(sorry for the double post)

UPDATE:
I did it! cavity is quite a bit straighter now, beam profile is about the same as before, possibly slightly better, waiting for a cooldown to double check, then I will edit the first post. the splash is greatly reduced, but still present, seems some of it is due to the IR filter being installed right behind the collimating lens, and at an angle, possibly in a correction effort from before I adjusted it, which is causing some minor internal reflections of sorts between it and the collimating lens. power output is a bit more stable, but I suspect a tiny bit lowered, but its hard to say without a very fast and precise LPM. It seems very comparable to how it was before though.

 

[bloompyle]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

Very interesting!

I've got a newly found love for solid state. It's just as fluid a medium as gas, and I respect that about solid state.

Excellent work on the realignment!

 

[crazyspaz]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

now to figure out what the heck the lasing medium is...I didn't think double coatings would be possible, but i may be wrong. No idea how you would find out what it is, though

 

[DashApple]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

now to figure out what the heck the lasing medium is...I didn't think double coatings would be possible, but i may be wrong. No idea how you would find out what it is, though

Double coatings are possible other wise there wouldn't be many lasers There are HR and AR coatings on each end of the crystals for more than one wavelength , such as in 532 , where there is usually HR 1064nm / AR 808nm at the pump end of the Nd:YVO4

For 589nm pointers there is no need for two separate ND:YAG crystals for each of the 2 IR lines , so they use one and coat it so it lases at the two IR lines needed , The KTP will also have AR coatings for both the IR lines at one end at lest , and then AR 589nm and HR on both IR lines the other end before the OC mirror .

 

[IsaacT]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

This is awesome. I love that pic of the opened module. It would be cool to create an acrylic sleeve or windowed host so you can see all of it. So 5exy.

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

Double coatings are possible other wise there wouldn't be many lasers There are HR and AR coatings on each end of the crystals for more than one wavelength , such as in 532 , where there is usually HR 1064nm / AR 808nm at the pump end of the Nd:YVO4

For 589nm pointers there is no need for two separate ND:YAG crystals for each of the 2 IR lines , so they use one and coat it so it lases at the two IR lines needed , The KTP will also have AR coatings for both the IR lines at one end at lest , and then AR 589nm and HR on both IR lines the other end before the OC mirror .

The coupler is AR 808.
Lasing medium is AR 808/HR 1064,1319 and 589 on the first surface, and AR 1064,1319,589 on the second.
The ktp is AR 1064,1319,589
And the OC is HR at 1064/1319, and whatever partial reflectance at 589 it needs for gain, and AR 589 on the outside.

 

[DashApple]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

The coupler is AR 808.
Lasing medium is AR 808/HR 1064,1319 and 589 on the first surface, and AR 1064,1319,589 on the second.
The ktp is AR 1064,1319,589
And the OC is HR at 1064/1319, and whatever partial reflect acne at 589 it needs for gain, and AR 589 on the outside.

Ah , Cool , was off on a few of them , Nice work BTW

 

[bdgreenb]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

if only i could figure out how to get my glp module out without ruining it completely...
Edit: im an idiot! It wasn't working with the cni recommended cr2 3V batteries, before i took it apart i tried a rcr2 juice 3.6V annnnd TADA gold photons back in my life
Seriously That JUST happened.

 

[IsaacT]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

What happened to your GLP?

 

[KungFuMaster]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

Watching you play around with this makes me cringe

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

if only i could figure out how to get my glp module out without ruining it completely...
Edit: im an idiot! It wasn't working with the cni recommended cr2 3V batteries, before i took it apart i tried a rcr2 juice 3.6V annnnd TADA gold photons back in my life
Seriously That JUST happened.

It's just a brass module with casings glued on. It separates at the ring with some force. The driver is behind the ring and the module is in front. They're not really made to be serviceable, but it can be done. Sounds like the circuit has high resistance. I think the driver handles up to 4.5V but it pushes it hard.

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

Also....Some notes on this....

it took a long time, and its very finicky...I wouldn't recommend this for people who aren't willing to sacrifice the laser...its quite finicky, and you're very likely to just make it worse. this took me a very long time to accomplish, and lots of trial and error. each laser is unique and won't behave exactly the same.

second...the module gets very hot as you do this, very quickly. The driver does as well. every time I touched the copper I could hear sizzling as the sweat and oils on my skin were 'burning' off, before it would quickly get hot to the touch.

The whole thing is very fragile, and it's pretty easy to touch where you shouldn't. Not easy, nor for the faint of heart.

also some additional fun I had when I ended up starting it from scratch, I piddled around with it at odd way off angles and got an idea halfway through...green! if the loss of the 1319 line is incurred, I could pass only 532nm and SHG in the normal SFG cavity. No I didn't change any of the optics....I did it with the normal yellow ones, at normal current.

Voila!

Green TEM00 though very weak...you can see the faint IR glow leaking through the OC as well since its so far off i'm allowing it to pass easier.

a little more....THERE! though with a few shadows.

Now more importantly....The results!

I've now had time all morning and some of last night/early morning in the dark to test it out thoroughly. It acts pretty much normal on full batteries, but it does take a moment to warm up and stablize, it starts at a odd TEM02 of sorts, that clearly is trying to bounce down, after about 10 seconds or so it jumped down to a proper TEM00 and stays that way for a long while, then as it heats up it deforms a bit, but I didn't see it shift again. I didn't run it too long, but it runs a lot longer than it did with the CNI alignment. It didn't drop TEM00 even as it started to overheat, at which point I turned it off to avoid damage. The host gets warm after a couple minutes. I don't think I'd like to run it that long too often, it can't be good for it. Success! though with tons of patience.

profile expanded on my wall....like a burning sun!

All done!

 

[IsaacT]

Re: the 589nm teardown and re-alignment [PIC HEAVY]

You did correct the divergence before packing her back up, right?

Also, grats on the excellent tweaks! Beamshots?