Orange/Yellow beam?

[zerafiel]

I attempted to get an orange/yellow beam last night by combining green and red beams using a beam splitter with a very hodgepodge setup which anyone can do. Took a little bit of aligning though.

Supposed to have a 4:1 ratio afaik
Red-> ~100+mW
Green-> DX true 30mW

The actual output is much less as I took less reflection of the green and slightly more of the red going through my crappy beam splitter.

Here is a picture of the beams combine with the slightest misalignment.

I had a picture of the whole setup but I accidently overwrote the only copy while cropping for that part above. Feeling extremely pissed at myself now.

So does that look orange/yellow to you guys or have I failed miserably?

 

[philguy]

Well, lookin' good!

Still amazes me that you can get an orange beam "so easily".


Anyhow, looks a bit like the beams were separating there, just before it hits the wall. Is that so?

 

[zerafiel]

Aligning took a damn long while though and I still couldn't get it right. Yes it looks slightly misaligned to me now that I have examined the photo. Just slightly say the beam spots are just 1 mm off. Green off to left and red off to right. Ugh I THOUGHT I had it.

Might have accidentally jarred it out of alignment while trying to take the picture and spraying the beam area. Camera was set in timer so I had to spray like mad when it clicked. You could even see my hand with the spray in the original whole photo.

The target was a black board and not a white wall to cut out diffuse reflections.

Gonna try it again someday with a real beamsplitter or a dichro.

 

[philguy]

didn't mean to make you feel bad about this - it is still a really hot setup you got - as the beam is orange! No question about that.

Could you take a pic of the setup again and post it here? Would be kinda cool.

 

[zerafiel]

Violet + Green = Cyan/Blue???

Decided to try green and violet this time instead. My red is all wrapped up.

Nothing special. anyone with 2 different colored lasers can try this at home. All you need is a piece of glass/plastic that is reflective and transmissive at the same time. And a steady hand. The plastic I used for this quick and dirty setup diffused the light quite a bit and hence the fuzziness. Gah my beams are not together AGAIN. So much for a 5 min setup.

Beamspot. Looks cyan to me. My blu-ray laser has too large a divergence.

Looks blue/bluray to me but I think my greenie ran out of battery juice and was running at reduced output. (left it on too long)
This was done on a different setup on the floor and the beams aligned at a longer distance.
Still I could see the beams very slightly apart left/right but it does not show up on the photo which was taken from a side view.

 

[BlueFusion]

nice work anyways!

 

[philguy]

You know, the cyan is truly a nice sight...nice beam!
And who cares about that bit of separation? Everybody can see it's cyan!


Dang, gotta get a green to make a rudimentary rgb...your colors truly are a dream!

 

[zerafiel]

Thanks. I'd suggest getting a weaker green for the mixing. My dx30 overpowers my other beams sometimes cos it's too bright and my blu-ray is too weak. Maybe try a 5mw (eg. Core) should be bright enough.

I'll try to bag better optics to play with next time.

 

[Tallaxo]

Very nice job of mixing, well done. I know just how fiddley this is to do, and it is virtually impossible without some form of beam seperation over distance. when we made the white beam on the laser meet, the first hour was taken up to set up the dichro just to get a steady orange yellow beam. then we had to integrate the blue to complete the white.
We only had a pure white on about 4 or 5 occasions each lasting about 3 or 4 seconds before we lost it again. Practice makes perfect, keep up the good work.

Jase

 

[Greenie]

Awesome pics man. I think you did a great job and would like to see some more.

 

[andy_con]

heres a question?

why does everyone thing lining two or three lasers up to make another colour hard???

its easy

 

[zerafiel]

Well andy, actually you are right and wrong.

It is certainly not hard to line up 2 beams. Could probably be done in say 5 minutes or less WITH proper equipment. But I guess for some poor guys without a table with mounting holes and sliding/rotating assemblies and adjustable beam-splitters/optics, it can take awhile and be quite a PITA to combine the beams. Not to mention without a fog machine, you can't see if your beams are actually aligned

My green and violet setup actually took me 10 minutes, of which half the time was spent strapping my lasers to suitable holders with rubber bands for constant on and the other half on adjusting and propping the lasers to correct height and levels.

I have combined beams in my optics class and at home and it is 5x harder, 5x longer and 5x lousier at home than in a lab. The theory is certainly not difficult if that is what you are talking about.

I totally recommend people with green and red lasers to try this at home yourself. It is simple and fun and you will find out how easy or hard it really is.

 

[zerafiel]

I don't know how to combine a 3rd beam with what equipment I have(read none).
What household items could serve as a homemade dichro?
How about liquids in glass containers, colored plastics, anything?

Any suggestions? Andy?

 

[andy_con]

i dont have any fancy optics table!

http://www.laser-man.co.uk/2006/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=6

i find it takes two mins to do.

to add a third beam you just need another dichro.

 

[zerafiel]

I have actually seen your site before. Very nice colors you have there. though there is still some splitting in some of them.

You see the problem is, I don't have any dichros.

2min/5min not much difference. The actual aligning take about that much time if everything else is ready. I do notice you use putty or blu-tack for your dichro and maybe to prop up your lasers. Great idea. Makes adjusting 100x easier, instead of looking for random things to prop stuff up.

 

[zerafiel]

BTW, I love your purple and cyan beams. Makes me want to get a blue laser!