A few pieces of glass:

[RA_pierce]

I took these out of a DVD drive. I don't know what they are. Anyone wanna tell me?
The bigger one splits the beam into two, it reflects probably about 60% and passes 40.
And I was wondering if the smaller one is a dichro...?
They are both gorilla glued to LR44s so you can see how small they are.

 

[wooooooolazer]

Im almost positive the cube is used to combine 2 laser beams into one, you have to shine one on the top then the other one reflects from a mirror then shines on the side.

Or i may be way off here...

...lazer.. ;D ;D ;D

 

[mliptack]

The Mirror like thing is a Beam Splitter, if you're facts are right it would be a 60/40 splitter

The cube is a polarized beam splitter cube, if it was harvested from a dvd burner it would be made to handle lasers in the 650nm range, and likely in the IR range too (it depends on the drive)

It can be used to split one randomly polarized beam into two beams (1- vertically and 1-horizontally polarized). It can also do the exact opposite. Combine 1- V. Pol and 1- H. Pol beam into one randomly polarized beam. They are very nice to have, and bigger ones can be used to make much higher power lasers

-Max

 

[mliptack]

Oh also, wooooooooolaser (not sure if I put enough oooo's in there) you were almost completely correct.

The one thing you said that wouldn't be entirely right is that you stack the beams...

First I'll tell you why that could be true. If you were using a PBS cube to combine more than 2 beams you would have to stack a horizontal one on top of the other or something along that degree.

But if you are only doing a 2 laser set up the lasers would have to enter the cube at a 90 degree angle from each other.

Below is an image I used in the group buy to show this. The PBS diagram is on the right (in the white portion of the image)
The black cube is the PBS cube and the black line is a mirror. The two red boxes are the red laser modules and the red lines... well that should be easy... those are the beams

 

[wooooooolazer]

Actualy that was exactly what i meant by shining one off of a mirror, i just meant by the top as in like the front side of the side, yes it makes no sense, im not good at explaining all this technical stuff

P.s. for the number of o's in my name jus look at my signature ;D

...lazer... ;D ;D ;D

 

[RA_pierce]

Hmmm... thanks for the information. I like my beam splitter. It's fun to play with. But the polarized beam splitter cube is too small to use with anything that has a beam diameter larger than 1mm.
What use would it have in a DVD drive? There was an IR and a Red diode inside. As far as I know, DVD readers don't combine beams...?

 

[wooooooolazer]

I think they dont combine them but they use them seperatly, like if a cds in there the ir is shining on the cube pointing at the same spot on the disk as the red would be if a dvd was in there.

So there used seperatly but they still end up at the exact same spot.

...lazer... ;D ;D ;D

 

[xanatos]

...the polarized beam splitter cube is too small to use with anything that has a beam diameter larger than 1mm.

It'd be perfecto for my applications! Send it to me!

Dave

 

[mliptack]

wlaser, ahh sorry I misinterpreted what you wrote and yeah sorry I over estimated the oo's only by two... :-[

If you break apart the PS3 modules you will see two PBS cubes, and if you power up the red or violet in the diode you will see that the beams take separate paths to different optical sensors, its some pretty cool engineering! And I'm a fan of ripping it apart

 

[RA_pierce]

[quote author=RA_pierce link=1199657571/0#5 date=1199661008]...the polarized beam splitter cube is too small to use with anything that has a beam diameter larger than 1mm.

It'd be perfecto for my applications! Send it to me!

Dave

[/quote]
I'll engrave it with "WL" call it a Wicked Beam Splitter and sell it to you for $49 + $40 shipping.

What exactly are your applications?

 

[xanatos]

Combining beams for higher power. Current project will combine 6 or 8 diodes (still undecided) for 1.2 to 1.6 W output. I need TINY components as I want this to fit in a case no more than 3.5" wide by 1.0" thick by 6 or 7 inches long, including batteries and support circuitry. So I need tiny! But I also need prototyping parts, so I'm always scrounging!

I'll take just about any pieces of optics I can get at the moment. I've been into electronics since the vacuum tube days, but my optical supplies are minimal.

Dave

 

[wooooooolazer]

Unfortunantly i dont think its possible to combine more than 2 with this cube because the resulting beam will have both horizontal and vertical polirazation and if you try to combine more it wont work.

At leasts that is what i heard.

..lazer... ;D ;D ;D

 

[xanatos]

That IS correct, but I am doing the same thing apaprently that Arctos does- use tiny FS mirrors to direct several diodes' output to a single mirror, which then pushes the bundle into one side of a PCBS/C, while my other bunch of beams gets stuffed into the adjacent side of the cube. The output of the cube is then actually going to be 6 or 8 individual beams which I will then collimate for output.

I'm also working with someone who designed something called a "beam homogenizer", and I'm looking into how to accomplish that with the 650nm range (his was designed for 300nm and less (UV)).

So all I need is one really cool little cube - and hope it'll take the optical power I'm going to stuff through it!

D

 

[mliptack]

You're right... unless you focused the beams down to a spot at the PBS, then you could fit a few more, and then you would have to play with some more lenses to get it back to a low diverging beam... just a thought.

But you are right, once you use a PBS to combine two beams you can not use another PBS cube to combine that beam with another.

 

[mliptack]

Xanatos, you beat me to it....

But you also cant overlap two similarly polarized beams, otherwise you will lose output that way too... :-/

 

[xanatos]

Wavefronts cancelling? Hmmm... thought about that. Looking into phase shifters/optical delay media, but know very little about that at the moment, though it looks promising.

D