How lasers pointer shape tips work ?

[FractalBuddha]

Is someone know exactly how the shapes are made for the lasers toys ?
On the right you can see what the transparent tip look like trough a microscope. There is no visible pattern of the butterfly. I can only see squared patterns.

My guess is that its works with constructive and destructive interference of the light, like with a diffracting gating. It should be very complicated to calculate !

 

[scopeguy20]

Nice pics, you can search / look up holography, it should explain how the diffraction can do a pic. -GH

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

I can imagine your next question will be how to make these yourself, that's what I want to know too. Maybe etching some plastic with an interference pattern of the illuminated 2D design with a reference beam? Wonder if the setup is like a typical transmission hologram but with a beefier laser?

 

[Eudaimonium]

I think those work like any other diffraction grating used, just except they don't make matrix dot pattern, they arrange the dots into whatever shape you have already, like a butterfly, little heart of a middle finger I had one of those too.

'Tis not that very complicated, if it were, they wouldn't be handed out by the dozen along with $1.50 laser pointers.

 

[FractalBuddha]

Me too, I am pretty sure it is diffraction pattern. I wonder if they calculate the matrix and print it from numeric data or they print it like an hologram from the original shape.
I think they calculate it.

I am curious of the maths behind all this and the physics. I know what is interference and how its works in general, but his seam to me more complicated.

If someone have a paper on the subject or a web site, it could be nice.

 

[phosphoressential]

'Tis not that very complicated, if it were, they wouldn't be handed out by the dozen along with $1.50 laser pointers.

In economies of scale, this logic is not always true. These interference patterns are very precise, small, and take a healthy amount of computing. They, like accelerometers, lithium batteries, and tiny cameras, are all produced at such a scale that they have become very cheap to make on long lived machines.

 

[Eudaimonium]

In economies of scale, this logic is not always true. These interference patterns are very precise, small, and take a healthy amount of computing. They, like accelerometers, lithium batteries, and tiny cameras, are all produced at such a scale that they have become very cheap to make on long lived machines.

While my post may not have been overly accurate, I don't think its correction is worth a necropost on a 5 and a half year old thread.