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FrozenGate by Avery

KES-400A ... Great Beginner LD

rog8811 said:
I beg to differ, the cubes in the KES400 work very well for the red and blu-ray as long as you polorise them (easy to do just rotate the module for best output)Yes the green looses 50% of its output but as it is far more visible to the eye you can easily afford to loose that power.
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But since the blue needs to reflect through one cube and transmit through the other, polarizing will increase efficiency with one cube at the expense of the other cube.  If you turn it so the polarization is vertical, you get full efficiency with the first cube but the worst possible efficiency with the second cube.  Same deal but reversed with horizontal polarization.

I agree that there is no way to use the PHR sled to combine three beams, but if you pull the PHR cube and the large PS3 cube out and align them yourself with some mirrors you should be able to do better.
 





All I can tell you is that it works well the way it is, the green is attenuated enough that the blu ray ( the weakest of the three to the human eye) easily matches it. Why make the build more complicated by mixing/matching/mounting optics when it is all done for you?

Regards rog8811
 
691175002 said:
For combining several beams the KES sled is convenient however it is pretty bulky and inefficient. In the beam path given by ROG you are likely to lose 50% of the green and 50% or more of the blue assuming they are both polarizing beamsplitters (I have a few I played around with, and I believe the small one is dichroic and transmits red but I'm not sure).

Since you have a bunch of sleds I would suggest popping the cubes out of one just to get a feeling of how they work. The PHR cube seems to be dichroic and will transmit red and reflect blue/green with incredible efficiency. In my experience, different colors/polarizations reflect/transmit differently in each type of cube/filter.

You are likely to lose 50% of the green no matter what you do since it is unpolarized (and I have yet to come across a useful dichroic for combining blue/green) but if polarize both the red and blue horizontally, combine them in the PHR cube and combine the purple with the green in the large PS3 cube you should be able to keep the majority of the red/blue.
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I have no idea if they would lose color or not yet, but the smaller one (which you say is dichroic), does seem to have a weird orange/greenish reflection of light, so it must be blocking out something. I haven’t gotten to experiment that much with many optics yet so I don’t really know about them that much.

I would pop out the cubes from the sleds, but I am going to save them and make a mass amount of RGV multicolor lasers based upon ROG8811’s idea. Then I plan on keeping the best one and selling the rest for some cash for more laser experimentation. I guess you’re right about the “PHR” (what does this mean?) cube not letting green/blue in since it does seems to reflect that color light when put in front of a lamp.

But I can afford to lose a lot of green since it will be a 50 mW module. I will still probably bee able to see it better than the other colors. I will try different combinations of the lasers.
 
Rog,

I like the design you have with the PHR-803T sled. It looks like it would be a lot more space efficient than the KES-400A design, but also harder to set up.
 
Just pointing out that to make a reasonably useful 3 color laser you need near inhuman alignment.
By my math, keeping the three beams within 1 centimeter of each other across 10 meters (30 feet) would be tan(1/ (10 * 100)) or +-0.057 degrees. To keep the three lasers together with a divergence of less than 1mRad (essentially keep them together forever since their individual divergences will be greater) will require precision along the lines of +-0.006 degrees.

For even mediocre alignment you are looking at something insanely precise which is why I just skipped right to building something to align for me. Since I am planning on removing the optics anyways I just mix and match what I think will work best.

The eye is also far more discerning than a camera when it comes to combined beams, you can see the beam combiner I made in my signature (Adjustment is all done by 40 thread/inch screws) and even though the pictures look great, to the eye it only looks yellow from a distance.
 
691175002 said:
Just pointing out that to make a reasonably useful 3 color laser you need near inhuman alignment.
By my math, keeping the three beams within 1 centimeter of each other across 10 meters (30 feet) would be tan(1/ (10 * 100)) or +-0.057 degrees. To keep the three lasers together with a divergence of less than 1mRad (essentially keep them together forever since their individual divergences will be greater) will require precision along the lines of +-0.006 degrees.

For even mediocre alignment you are looking at something insanely precise which is why I just skipped right to building something to align for me. Since I am planning on removing the optics anyways I just mix and match what I think will work best.

The eye is also far more discerning than a camera when it comes to combined beams, you can see the beam combiner I made in my signature (Adjustment is all done by 40 thread/inch screws) and even though the pictures look great, to the eye it only looks yellow from a distance.
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Well since the KES-400A is built by machines (which are pretty inhuman), I think it is more than possible that the laser modules can be aligned almost perfectly. About divergence, on the other hand, I have no idea the science or math behind divergence and how that would affect the beam.

I would love to see the design of the beam combiner that you made. Did you build it yourself, or take something like Rog did (the KES-400A) and mod it? I am still going to try to build my multicolored laser. I hope it works.

-Jakob
 
I have a progress thread from start to finish here: http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1233639271/0

Everything is just screwed down onto a piece of acrylic and o-rings or pieces of felt allow me to tighten or loosen the screws and change the angle of the parts.

The divergence I am talking about is just the angle between the beams (aka how much they spread apart). I am assuming that if the laser modules are misaligned by 5 degrees, the two resulting beams will also diverge by 5 degrees.
 
691175002 said:
I have a progress thread from start to finish here: http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1233639271/0

Everything is just screwed down onto a piece of acrylic and o-rings or pieces of felt allow me to tighten or loosen the screws and change the angle of the parts.

The divergence I am talking about is just the angle between the beams (aka how much they spread apart).  I am assuming that if the laser modules are misaligned by 5 degrees, the two resulting beams will also diverge by 5 degrees.
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I like your design. It is simple, and efficient. Have you ever though of adding a blue laser next to the other 2, and another beamsplitter cube to make a much wider range of colors? You might lose some efficiency in some of the lasers (like in the KES-400A), but it would still combine the colors to make 7 instead of 3 and be even cooler than your 2-laser design.

But I could imagine some problems calibrating it to keep the beams together for more than 20 feet.
 
My eventual goal is to stick red green and violet into a pointer and have it with near perfect alignment. I just started with two colors to test how hard alignment is with screws. Right now I am working on building some insanely small kinematic mirror mounts with 72TPI screws, 1/8th inch ball bearings and some springs from pens. By my math, the dimensions translate into 1 degree of screw turn = 0.0056 degrees in the beam which should be enough. It is going to be really time consuming to build though, things just get harder as they get smaller.

The screws and o-rings had some crosstalk (adjusting one axis will change the other axis) because turning the screws would shift the o-rings slightly and it made it more frustrating to align than it had to be.
 
691175002 said:
My eventual goal is to stick red green and violet into a pointer and have it with near perfect alignment.  I just started with two colors to test how hard alignment is with screws.  Right now I am working on building some insanely small kinematic mirror mounts with 72TPI screws, 1/8th inch ball bearings and some springs from pens.  By my math, the dimensions translate into 1 degree of screw turn = 0.0056 degrees in the beam which should be enough.  It is going to be really time consuming to build though, things just get harder as they get smaller.

The screws and o-rings had some crosstalk (adjusting one axis will change the other axis) because turning the screws would shift the o-rings slightly and it made it more frustrating to align than it had to be.  
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That sounds really hard to do. I think everybody has trouble working with insanely small parts like that, including me. But if you do achieve that, you will have incredible control over your beams using the mirrors. The o-rings sound like a problem though.
 
I have the chance to buy 4 KES Sled's for 36$ + 12$ shipping. Thats 38€ for me atm. Offer is valid until tomorow, 2pm. What do you think, shall i go for this, or can i get them cheaper somewhere else?

Never had luck with them, 2 times missed the instantbuy with 6 sleds for 20 bucks. Then recently got overbid in the last minute at deepest night with damned 50ct on a 4 sled auction >:(
 
Xer0 said:
I have the chance to buy 4 KES Sled's for 36$ + 12$ shipping. Thats 38€ for me atm. Offer is valid until tomorow, 2pm. What do you think, shall i go for this, or can i get them cheaper somewhere else?
Never had luck with them, 2 times missed the instantbuy with 6 sleds for 20 bucks. Then recently got overbid in the last minute at deepest night with damned 50ct on a 4 sled auction >:(
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That works out to $12 each.  That is more than I would pay for them.  Of course, shipping whole sleds (instead of just the diodes) to Germany will increase the cost, but I wouldn't pay this.  Keep your eyes open and be patient.  You will find them for less.

How many are you looking for. I can watch for some for you. If you can wait a week or so, I could probably shake some out of a source.

Peace,
dave
 
daguin said:
many are you looking for. I can watch for some for you. If you can wait a week or so, I could probably shake some out of a source.
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There is no hurry on this; i want to make a RGBr Projector this year, but funding this project will be possible not earlier than ~April/May. So if i can get them cheaper i would wait, of course. It just this "you missed a lot of chances already, dou you realy want to risk ending to have pay 30$ for just one psxboy sled, or pay now a bit more but get 4 of them" feeling, you understand.
How much i need? Ow... 1-10 i would say. at least one, to make an Rog-inspired RGBr Labby from. If i get 2, i will try to build a portable choose-your-color pointer, and >3 could help in selling some RGBr's to finance my expensive primary target.

Hmm, you say you pay less for them... how much, exactly? But if its =<5$ per sled i may have to cry ;D
 
Xer0 said:
There is no hurry on this; i want to make a RGBr Projector this year, but funding this project will be possible not earlier than ~April/May. So if i can get them cheaper i would wait, of course. It just this "you missed a lot of chances already, dou you realy want to risk ending to have pay 30$ for just one psxboy sled, or pay now a bit more but get 4 of them" feeling, you understand.
How much i need? Ow... 1-10 i would say. at least one, to make an Rog-inspired RGBr Labby from. If i get 2, i will try to build a portable choose-your-color pointer, and >3 could help in selling some RGBr's to finance my expensive primary target.

Hmm, you say you pay less for them... how much, exactly? But if its =<5$ per sled i may have to cry  ;D
Click to expand...

What if I told you that after checking eBay for a while, I got a lot of six KES-400A sleds (pulled from nonfunctional PS3 drives) for $20 no shipping. They are all dead and gone now, and I haven't seen such a good deal since, but at $3.33 per sled it is an incredible deal! But I would expect to get a lot of six sleds again for less than $30.

But the prices you're paying, $60 for four sleds, is way too much. I would look on eBay for a better deal.

-Jakob
 
Ookay, now its to late, anyway... i was sleeping a bit to long ;D
 
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