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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

60 Watt Laser Destruction

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Got some more work done on the laser this weekend, decided to throw up a video of various things meeting their doom to 60 watts of coherent light. The laser is still a WIP and hasn't been run at its max current . I ran about 70 amps for the video. Items burnt: electrical tape, cd case, used match stick, plastic, cardboard

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xT2hSnmyOg[/media]


Highres picture:
Click Image to Enlarge
 





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love the laser but its not a real big deal to use it to burn tape ;)
when properly focuses it should easely burn wood plastic thin metal and even glas
 

Benm

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Well, the rate at which that tape catches fire seems promising ;)

Is there any way to improve focus from the line pattern to something more like a dot? I suppose thats also a hard part of putting such laser arrays to use directly.
 
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From the title I was scared you destroyed a 60W laser! Those diode bars are great. Good thinking on the high angle of the focusing optic to prevent back reflections onto the emitters. I'm sure the optic is not coated for 808nm (looks like a lens from an overhead projector to me). If you ever come across a large cylindrical lens or even better a light duct you will be able to focus that beast down very small.
 

JLSE

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lol, set laser to 'good' ;D I still have mine on the shelf... I hope to get it up and running this month, got too much on my plate right now but am looking forward to firing it up at full tilt when I get some down time:)

Im still a bit nervous about the whole exploding glass optic thing :-/
 
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FrothyChimp said:
From the title I was scared you destroyed a 60W laser! Those diode bars are great. Good thinking on the high angle of the focusing optic to prevent back reflections onto the emitters. I'm sure the optic is not coated for 808nm (looks like a lens from an overhead projector to me). If you ever come across a large cylindrical lens or even better a light duct you will be able to focus that beast down very small.

Yeah I need to find proper optics for it - I don't wanna kill it just because a crappy lens reflected light back into the diodes :-/

Later I hope to hook up my Acopian PSU to run this, the current MOT based power supply even with all those huge capacitors still has bad ripple.

I'll probably be doing more videos in the future with more "unusual" things to burn besides your standard tape/matches/plastic :) And yes, it does burn wood, basically the same as the cardboard in this video.
 

Switch

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Sorry this is a bit unrelated. :D

You have a comment from some guy saying

holy crap on a stick that was amazing STRONGER THAN WELL ANYTHING do you have any 300 mw laser that i could have?? if not then how about 10 mw lasers??? and if not then its fine

And I think "wtf? is this guy serious?" so I reply

i have a few 300mW lasers, what wavelength would you like? Just send me the address and don't worry, I'll also pay for shipping

thinking that no sarcasm tags were necessary right? ::)
But then he sends me a message with his name and address and sounds really serious.I even googled his name....it's not a pun name....I really think he's serious....And he asks me to keep his name and address private.Well it's good that he wants them private but he just sends them to some random guy on the internet hoping for a free laser :p
 

Benm

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FrothyChimp said:
Good thinking on the high angle of the focusing optic to prevent back reflections onto the emitters. I'm sure the optic is not coated for 808nm (looks like a lens from an overhead projector to me). If you ever come across a large cylindrical lens or even better a light duct you will be able to focus that beast down very small.

Do you think the chance of harmful reflections is that large?

I can imagine how a planoconcave lens might cause bad reflections if the plano side is facing the emitters, but this looks like a biconcave lens, so the reflection should spread out considerably as long as its at some distance from the diodes.

A cylindrical lens (or 2) could improve focus to a dot at short range, though it doubt it would help at infinity - thats just not very feasible with this size of an emitting area.
 
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That guy should visit my friend in the fourth dimension. I can sell him tickets. :p

Back on topic,
The laser is looking good as always Mario. [smiley=thumbsup.gif]
 
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Benm said:
[quote author=FrothyChimp link=1236618313/0#4 date=1236623304]
Good thinking on the high angle of the focusing optic to prevent back reflections onto the emitters. I'm sure the optic is not coated for 808nm (looks like a lens from an overhead projector to me). If you ever come across a large cylindrical lens or even better a light duct you will be able to focus that beast down very small.

Do you think the chance of harmful reflections is that large?

I can imagine how a planoconcave lens might cause bad reflections if the plano side is facing the emitters, but this looks like a biconcave lens, so the reflection should spread out considerably as long as its at some distance from the diodes.

A cylindrical lens (or 2) could improve focus to a dot at short range, though it doubt it would help at infinity - thats just not very feasible with this size of an emitting area. [/quote]

Yeah, the cylindrical lenses would be for awesome burnination, not long range. Yes, there is chance to damage the emitters even with low power reflections. I say why take the chance if you don't have AR optics.
 
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I haven't seen a video of a CO2 laser with a camera that picks up the IR like that before-nice video.
 

Benm

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I suppose it depends on the coatings though... crown glasses often have MgF2 coatings to reduce general relfections, but those reduce the problem only by a factor of 4 or so.

Finding something like a cylindrical lens with a dielectric 808 AR coating could prove very difficult at best!
 

Switch

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LRMNmeyer said:
I haven't seen a video of a CO2 laser with a camera that picks up the IR like that before-nice video.

Unless it's a thermal imaging camera you're never gonna see a beam from a CO[sub]2[/sub] laser. :D This is a diode array, quite similar to pump diodes.As a matter of fact, these are probably used to pump YAG.It's 808nm.Unlike 808nm, 10600nm is nowhere near the edge of the visible spectrum, and won't show up on your average CCD. :p
 
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Switch said:
[quote author=LRMNmeyer link=1236618313/0#11 date=1236649314]I haven't seen a video of a CO2 laser with a camera that picks up the IR like that before-nice video.

Unless it's a thermal imaging camera you're never gonna see a beam from a CO[sub]2[/sub] laser. :D This is a diode array, quite similar to pump diodes.As a matter of fact, these are probably used to pump YAG.It's 808nm.Unlike 808nm, 10600nm is nowhere near the edge of the visible spectrum, and won't show up on your average CCD. :p[/quote]
I didn't think of that. <_<
I haven't been on this site for a while, so I'm kind of lost on what everyone's working on. >_>
 




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