Purposely etching patterns / pictures into an already scratched gball diode lense?

[405nanoMatt]

I was wondering if anyone had ever tried this or if anyone had any good ideas for what to use . I am going to make an attempt using a couple different methods I will report back.

 

[CurtisOliver]

I was wondering if anyone had ever tried this or if anyone had any good ideas for what to use . I am going to make an attempt using a couple different methods I will report back.

I’ve done glass engraving with a co2 laser before and glass behaves differently to most materials. The engraving forms multiple small frits rather than a clean engrave like with pmma for example. For most engravings the quality is still very good. However we are taking about an incredibly small scale. A co2 laser dot is around 0.1mm. So you would need a shorter wavelength to achieve anything high resolution enough on a glass surface that small. You are probably talking 532 or even UV marking machines.

 

[Shmackitup]

This is a pretty neat idea. However, the area of the collimated beam coming out of the lens is much smaller than the actual lens so you'd really need some precision etching. This idea may be more feasible with a large window non-collimated diode.

 

[CurtisOliver]

This is a pretty neat idea. However, the area of the collimated beam coming out of the lens is much smaller than the actual lens so you'd really need some precision etching. This idea may be more feasible with a large window non-collimated diode.

You sure would. It’s one of those problems that are not impossible but practically difficult. Its a case of microprocessing. I’m wondering whether a single mode 405nm engraver will have enough power density and clarity to achieve a engraving of that sort of scale. The issue is cheap engravers generally are not as well calibrated to allow for such microengraving. Not unless you can get a galvo based system.

 

[Eidetical]

One would need an e-beam hologram writer to get patterns small enough to mimic the images provided by diffractive optics. Those are available, but cost a lot.

 

[Ears and Eggs]

Would be really cool if you could do that and create custom images. I've always wondered how difficult it would be to create custom pattern/image lens tips like those cheapo 1mW red laser pointers always used to come with.

 

[Eidetical]

For low power use, one can make a hologram of a pattern. Problem is that if the power of the beam going through it is too high, it will melt the material. The DOEs sold are probably plastic castings of a surface relief master on quartz glass. Use glass and the beam going through can be of high power. I wonder how much power the photopolymer material I used for my bunny hologram can take. If that material can handle reasonable power, It would easy to make custom patterns. Animated patterns are possible by scanning a beam around on a plate with a three-dimensional image on it, multiple exposures.