Probably a stupid question?

[mike666]

I'm a noobie at all this so forgive me if this is a really stupid question.

As most people know, if you have a light in a dark room and you turn it on it will light the room up :.
If you had two lights in the room and turned the second one on, the room would be twice as bright .

If you could make the beams from two lasers point along the same axis, would the resulting beam be brighter and have a higher mW output?

So, for instance, if you used mirrors to make the beams from two 5mW lasers travel in the same direction, would the resulting beam be brighter and have a power of about 10mW?

 

[Cyparagon]

If you had two lights in the room and turned the second one on, the room would be twice as bright  .

~1.5 times as bright, actually.

Yes. The power would double, but the apparent brightness would increase by approximately 50%.

 

[Liberty1992]

yea it would increase in power, but what are you trying to do increase the power or increase the brightness of the dot?

 

[mike666]

yea it would increase in power, but what are you trying to do increase the power or increase the brightness of the dot?

I'm not trying to achieve anything, it was just a thought I had.

So if you had, say, four 500mW lasers all alined along the same axis, then you would have a combined 2W laser beam or therabouts? Is that right?

 

[ElektroFreak]

That is correct. You'd need beam-combining optics (which are relatively easily obtained) to combine all the beams, but it definitely works. this is the theory behind combining red, green, and blue laser beams to make an RGB full-color system, except that in your case all the beams would be the same color, and the result would be higher output.

 

[Liberty1992]

[quote author=Liberty1992 link=1226316653/0#2 date=1226332749]yea it would increase in power, but what are you trying to do increase the power or increase the brightness of the dot?

I'm not trying to achieve anything, it was just a thought I had.

So if you had, say, four 500mW lasers all aligned along the same axis, then you would have a combined 2W laser beam or thereabouts? Is that right?[/quote]
yea that's right, why you would actually do that idk, but it would work

 

[mike666]

mmmm interesting.

Thanks guys.

 

[Switch]

That is correct. You'd need beam-combining optics (which are relatively easily obtained) to combine all the beams, but it definitely works. this is the theory behind combining red, green, and blue laser beams to make an RGB full-color system, except that in your case all the beams would be the same color, and the result would be higher output.

How would you go combining four green beams with easily obtained optics? :-/

 

[artix]

How would you go combining four green beams with easily obtained optics? :-/

You would need 3 of these.

 

[ElektroFreak]

You could also do it with this setup from CNI:
http://www.cnilaser.com/Polarization beam splitter plate.htm

just repeat the process for each additional laser.