Blue-Blue dichro from LIVE lasersystems for combining 445 and 462nm

[Light superglue]

Thank you Diachi for puting my attention to this amaising new dichro mirror.

The thread about it is in Photonlexicon forum, Group Buys section. The price is not low (EUR95+ taxes/shipping), but I do not know anything similar under 500-800USD.

So the idea was to combine 4 most powerful LDs we have at the moment - NUBM44 and NUBM07E. Both are blues with ~15nm difference in wavelength.
2 of each are pretty easily combined via PBS but there is no way to make a single beam from 4 or more (if we want to add green etc.) except using Dichro mirrors. Again, single beams means no knife edging involved, so the resulting combined beam could be easily shaped for every purpose.

I purchased one from LIVE lasersystems in Austria. The seller provided a spectrogramm (I may attach it later) which was not very encouraging for wavelengths I work with (452 and 470 nm) but the best way of testing is experiment.
So, first I tested the recently made light engine from my blaster with 2 PBS combined 07E at 4.5A current and the presumably 470nm beam was very well reflected by this dichro with ~95% efficiency.

Second, I tested the NUBM44 with driver set at 5A (it is fixed in another PBS combined device, so the reading is after the presumably 452nm beam has passed PBS and cylindricals). Here the transparence was at 97%

Third, I tested 3 more NUBM44 obtained from DTR during last and this year with drivers set at 4.5A and for all of their beams this dichro has shown a good transparense of around 93%.

Next I would like to test it with NUBM06 when DTR has them back in stock.

 

[AaronT]

A single beam of over 20 Watts...

I've been wanting to do pairs of NUMB44s/NUMB06Es PBS combined on a 3 cell Maglite build.

I could build one of each, than use the "heads" for a combined build using this dichro...

 

[diachi]

You're most welcome, good to see people doing stuff with these dichros! Keep us posted on your experiments!

 

[H2Oxide]

Calling it now. Within 5 years someone will have built a 100W visible handheld.

 

[AaronT]

Calling it now. Within 5 years someone will have built a 100W visible handheld.

Take 5 of my proposed assemblies and knife them together for a 100W square beam.

It would take 30 32650 batteries to power it all.

That's about 12lbs in just batteries.

I bet I could build a 20 Watt handheld from a 6 cell Maglite this year though...

 

[dden4012]

Take 5 of my proposed assemblies and knife them together for a 100W square beam.

It would take 30 32650 batteries to power it all.

That's about 12lbs in just batteries.

I bet I could build a 20 Watt handheld from a 6 cell Maglite this year though...

You have a 2 months to get this thing built and posted up here for for the season of spending money celebration

 

[AaronT]

You have a 2 months to get this thing built and posted up here for for the season of spending money celebration

I came up with a way to cut build cost in half by temp gluing optics to the Newport Mounts temp gluing those in place, make all adjustments, glue optics directly to mount/sink and remove the Newport Mounts so they can be used again.

This saves me buying a bunch of them and allows me even more compact optical arrangements.

I think I can fit the 4 Diode 2x PBS to Dicro 20 watt assembly within the footprint of The Belphegors head assembly this way.

I'll try to whip something up in paint...

It is actually a bit smaller than the Belphegor in this layout.

If the BlackBuck external pot drivers test well I think I could add adjustable beam controls and go as high as 24-26 Watts maybe higher for short bursts if I push the diodes a bit (Even considering optical loss).

This would all fit on a 6 Cell Maglite.

An interesting variation might be a phaser rifle/blaster rifle build from a toy/prop host...

 

[Light superglue]

Can you add more engineering details to this drawing, please?

I mean dimentions, kind of mounts/heatsinks you plan to use (or machine yourself), what diodes to combine in order to get 26W output?
What kind of beam you want to get omitting waveplates and corrections optics from your design?

 

[diachi]

I came up with a way to cut build cost in half by temp gluing optics to the Newport Mounts temp gluing those in place, make all adjustments, glue optics directly to mount/sink and remove the Newport Mounts so they can be used again.

That's basically how it's done in a lot of lab lasers, saves space and reduces cost. Just need to hope it never goes out of alignment

 

[AaronT]

Can you add more engineering details to this drawing, please?

I mean dimentions, kind of mounts/heatsinks you plan to use (or machine yourself), what diodes to combine in order to get 26W output?
What kind of beam you want to get omitting waveplates and corrections optics from your design?

Drawing is to scale of a D Cell Maglite head plus sink, this includes the size of diodes and components.

The PBS cubes would be mounted with temporary 1/2 in adjustment mounts then fixed in place, same for mirror and dichro.

Parts

2x NUBM44
2x NUBM06E
2x .5in PBS cubes
1x .5in Mirror
1x Blue dichro
4x BlackBuck M8 with external pots


Here is the most basic arrangement without any heat sinks, this could all be mounted on one flat surface.

As for the actual layout, construction method and exact dimensions I plan to keep those to myself tell I have this built.

 

[10fenny]

Did you make that optical bench or.....?

 

[Light superglue]

What do you mean saying "or..."

Sure I made both of them.
About one on Thorlabs baseplate the story with pictures is described in Red Cowboys' thread about "Beam splitter for 14W of blue".
The other (on 3mm Al sheet) was built for "6.6W blaster" in Other Colours section.

 

[Light superglue]

Re: Blue-Blue dichro from LIVE lasersystems for combining 445 and 462nm (New Data!!!)

After almost 8 months of testing different 05/06/08/47 diodes from DTR I would like to finish this experiment and report now the data.

As in OP of this thread, the beams from four NUBM44 were completely passing this Dichro (cutoff WL ~455nm) and the beams from both NUBM07 were completely reflected.

Here are the new data collected at 4.5A current in 22mm Al heatsinks (set up pictures in OP) and compiled as table on paper sheet, taking into account that in some cases (WL too close to cutoff range of the Dichro) the R and P ratios depend on polarisation, what I mark as spot shape on the wall >1-2m away (Horizontal or Vertical):

From four NUBM06 and one NUBM47:
All beams are passing with >90% efficiency and only one last 06 starts to lose the P efficiency after 15 sec apparently due to WL shift when heating.

From four NUBM08:
Two beams are reflected very well (and by combining them with PBS in different polarisations 10.8W could be reached both ways), one beam is passing (6.5W), and one beam is passing at start but starts to be partially reflected after 15 sec.

From five NUBM05:
Two beams are passing but slowly lose the ratio and the rest is reflected with losses similar to NUBM08.

The conclusions:
-NUBM06 and NUBM44/47 seem to be "of same material" - it would be almost impossible to find among these LDs ones with WL>455nm.
-NUBM05 and NUBM08 from other side are much closer to NUBM07 in WL, most of them must have WL>455nm at 4.5A current but NUBM08 is a little more efficient.
What also is important - NUBM08 have better collimated G-balls (2 of 4 produce line spot as thin as G-2 would) while all three NUBM05 I purchased with Gballs produce a more or less thick line/square spot.

 

[RedCowboy]

Good work.

I have more NUBM06 on the way from China but I have only had 1 NUBM08 and the color was very pretty, loved the color, I would estimate 455nm or better but the focus was awful, it was probably the 1st one DTR had up for sale and was expensive, 140.00 IIRC and the bar at 15 feet was 1 inch by 3 inches so I removed the can and used it in a host with a 3X BE which protects the diode well as the 3 element never moves, still it was at half power in 7 weeks of daily short duty cycle use. The output without the can is the same as the NUBM44 as far as divergence, power is slightly less, other than the color the NUBM06 is better as it has 2/3 the natural divergence.

With cans removed and using a G2 the 08 made a 2 inch line at 15 feet and the 06 made a 1.25 inch line at 15 feet, the 06 was measured at 5.7 watts @ 4.5 amps where the 44 made 6.8 watts @ 4.5 amps but the divergence makes the 06 seem every bit as strong if not stronger in some cases, with a well focused lens I love the 06, but it's luck of the draw where as the 44 you know you can manipulate the beam and get good results, still if the 08 has a good focused lens in it's line up the color makes it attractive, but until we get a 7w diode with better divergence the 44 is the king, although I do like these 06's and plan to try 4X and 6X correction on the best focused lenses, it just takes time to bid on them and get them, now if they were pre binned or simply all ordered with the better focused balls...