Hi guys,
I've managed to get my sticky little mitts on a KES-400 Blu-Ray reader assembly that got "a little wet". Apparently it was posted in a paper envelope and the postman very kindly left it in a puddle. A friend gave me it on the basis that "there's no way the mail service will admit culpability and I don't want to put it in a customer's PS3 even if it does work". So now it's mine
I've even got a neat project idea. I've already got a laser scanner assembly from an old HP LaserJet III, and what I'd like to do is replace the existing IRLD with the BD diode, tweak the optics and constant-current circuit a little, and use it to make up a homebrew photo-paper printer (photographic paper, i.e. silver-halide, has a peak sensitivity in the blue-green range; it's almost completely insensitive to red and IR). Think of it as a poor man's Fuji Frontier...
So anyway. I know about the safety issues involved in driving these little beasties, and that reflections off a "conveniently located and forgotten about" chunk of metal can cause (at the very least) spots-before-the-eyes, and at most permanent blindness in at least one eye. "DANGER: Big Scary Laser. Do NOT Look Into Beam With Remaining Eye."
(I also have some questions about optics -- specifically if my BD laser is going to produce a more circular spot than my red-light 5mW cheapies which quite frankly produce more of a line than a spot, and whether I'll be able to get that spot down to the ~0.08mm necessary to do a 300DPI print... but that's for later )
I want to have a play with the scanner and BD laser myself, but I'd like to keep what's left of my vision intact (I'm already long-sighted, and nowhere near 20:20 even with corrective lenses, I don't need any more visual "issues"). So, onto the questions:
Obviously I need protective goggles. I've seen such things on Dealextreme and Ebay, but there's a niggling voice in the back of my head saying a $10 pair of laser goggles probably isn't going to work very well. And there are so many variants... What should I be looking for if I want to safely work with a KES-400 LD?
Obviously I'm not going to be downright stupid and, say, look right into the beampath while the PSU is live -- I wouldn't be putting my eye within several feet without a shorting link across the PSU output, the AC input plug pulled, and the main switch well and truly OFF.
Next up -- power meters. I've heard of the Coherent Lasercheck, but there is no way my student budget is going to stretch to something that the local testgear dealers want £400 for uncalibrated (and then another £150 to calibrate it)... Are there any "almost as good" alternatives that I might consider?
Bonus points for anything that has a UK or European distributor, saves messing around with import duties and such.
Apologies if I sound like a "n00b" -- it's probably because I am
But everyone's got to start somewhere, right?
Thanks,
Phil.
I've managed to get my sticky little mitts on a KES-400 Blu-Ray reader assembly that got "a little wet". Apparently it was posted in a paper envelope and the postman very kindly left it in a puddle. A friend gave me it on the basis that "there's no way the mail service will admit culpability and I don't want to put it in a customer's PS3 even if it does work". So now it's mine
I've even got a neat project idea. I've already got a laser scanner assembly from an old HP LaserJet III, and what I'd like to do is replace the existing IRLD with the BD diode, tweak the optics and constant-current circuit a little, and use it to make up a homebrew photo-paper printer (photographic paper, i.e. silver-halide, has a peak sensitivity in the blue-green range; it's almost completely insensitive to red and IR). Think of it as a poor man's Fuji Frontier...
So anyway. I know about the safety issues involved in driving these little beasties, and that reflections off a "conveniently located and forgotten about" chunk of metal can cause (at the very least) spots-before-the-eyes, and at most permanent blindness in at least one eye. "DANGER: Big Scary Laser. Do NOT Look Into Beam With Remaining Eye."
(I also have some questions about optics -- specifically if my BD laser is going to produce a more circular spot than my red-light 5mW cheapies which quite frankly produce more of a line than a spot, and whether I'll be able to get that spot down to the ~0.08mm necessary to do a 300DPI print... but that's for later
)I want to have a play with the scanner and BD laser myself, but I'd like to keep what's left of my vision intact (I'm already long-sighted, and nowhere near 20:20 even with corrective lenses, I don't need any more visual "issues"). So, onto the questions:
Obviously I need protective goggles. I've seen such things on Dealextreme and Ebay, but there's a niggling voice in the back of my head saying a $10 pair of laser goggles probably isn't going to work very well. And there are so many variants... What should I be looking for if I want to safely work with a KES-400 LD?
Obviously I'm not going to be downright stupid and, say, look right into the beampath while the PSU is live -- I wouldn't be putting my eye within several feet without a shorting link across the PSU output, the AC input plug pulled, and the main switch well and truly OFF.
Next up -- power meters. I've heard of the Coherent Lasercheck, but there is no way my student budget is going to stretch to something that the local testgear dealers want £400 for uncalibrated (and then another £150 to calibrate it)... Are there any "almost as good" alternatives that I might consider?
Bonus points for anything that has a UK or European distributor, saves messing around with import duties and such.
Apologies if I sound like a "n00b" -- it's probably because I am
But everyone's got to start somewhere, right?
Thanks,
Phil.
