review of o-like 100mW 532nm Lab-style with TEC

[ElektroFreak]

I'm still waiting for a camera. I refuse to even attempt it with my phone.. Apologies to all, but I would also like to add that beamshots can't happen in my house since my wife and I are really strict about clean air, so the best you'd get is a pic of the laser iteself. I have a baby daughter that lives right across from my shop, so no fog machines, incense or smoke of any kind. I'll be getting some dry ice once I get my camera to do some beamshots of a few of my lasers and when I do I'll posts some in this thread. Again, I'm very sorry to all who want pics from me, but as I said before there are some pics on o-like.com, sans beamshots, unfortunately.

 

[Liquidsys]

I'm still waiting for a camera. I refuse to even attempt it with my phone.. Apologies to all, but I would also like to add that beamshots can't happen in my house since my wife and I are really strict about clean air, so the best you'd get is a pic of the laser iteself. I have a baby daughter that lives right across from my shop, so no fog machines, incense or smoke of any kind. I'll be getting some dry ice once I get my camera to do some beamshots of a few of my lasers and when I do I'll posts some in this thread. Again, I'm very sorry to all who want pics from me, but as I said before there are some pics on o-like.com, sans beamshots, unfortunately.

Well, lucky for everyone else, I have this same module and took shots last night. I did not use fog, incense or smoke, but I did use lots of mirrors to bounce the beam all over the place for fun. =)

See attached!

 

[ElektroFreak]

Not bad for no smoke in the air.. looks nice. How do you feel about yours?

 

[Liquidsys]

Not bad for no smoke in the air.. looks nice. How do you feel about yours?

It's great so far, worth every penny. Brighter than I had anticipated. I haven't tried to do a burn or anything with it yet. I'll look into that shortly and check it out... I think my next module like this I'd prefer something in the 300mw or more range as I've been having lots of fun with beam splitters, mirrors, prisms etc. and I'd like to snake a beam or two through my entire house, or make a room look like a bank vault =)

I do have one question, I bought 10 mirrors from nova, but each mirror doesn't seem to be a 100% mirror, as they have quite a bit of bleed through that shoots right through the mirror...

Seems like I'm losing a lot of power / light this way.. Where can I get high quality mirrors that transmit as close to 100% power as possible? Any ideas?

 

[ElektroFreak]

Divergence will be more of a problem than output power when it comes to snaking the beam throughout your house. As the beam gets wider and wider it will become less and less visible.

As far as mirrors, you need some decent first surface mirrors. Almost all glass mirrors will bleed a little light through them. In my experience, the most perfect mirror material I have found is a hard drive platter. They are highly polished metal and are 100% opaque so no light can bleed through. Reflectivity is about as close to 100% as you'll find. The only problem with this is cutting the platters apart, and it's impossible to find them bigger than 5.25" across.

 

[ndrew2505]

i bought 2 of the 90-100mw modules and both output more than 100mw after a warm up.. both start out ~90mw but after 20-30 sec you see the power start to raise as it gets warmed up. the module i put in a lab style heatsink did 145mw peak last night...

thanks susie

 

[Liquidsys]

Divergence will be more of a problem than output power when it comes to snaking the beam throughout your house. As the beam gets wider and wider it will become less and less visible.

As far as mirrors, you need some decent first surface mirrors. Almost all glass mirrors will bleed a little light through them. In my experience, the most perfect mirror material I have found is a hard drive platter. They are highly polished metal and are 100% opaque so no light can bleed through. Reflectivity is about as close to 100% as you'll find. The only problem with this is cutting the platters apart, and it's impossible to find them bigger than 5.25" across.

True, do you know of a place to find such mirrors? Also, is there any way to fix the beam divergence, such as focus it through some sort of lense at certain points?

 

[BrewCityMusic]

American Science & Surplus : Search Results for "first mirrors"

This is a great source for the first-surface mirrors, price is right, fast shipping and great service!

(sorry - just fixed the link, they're the second item on the page)

 

[ElektroFreak]

Your mirror question is easy. If you want to use a hard drive platter, you just need to take apart a hard drive and remove one. As I said, the hard part will be cutting it to size. Regarding glass first-surface mirrors, they are easily available from ebay in many sizes, just do a search.

As far as divergence, that's not quite as easy when you're talking about green lasers. Here's a thread about this very thing. It involves a handheld laser, but all of it applies to lab-style systems like yours as well. You could conceivably place lenses to help control the divergence, but they would have to be very precisely selected and mounted. It would be easiest to just use a beam-expander (which is discussed in the thread I just linked to). Hope this helps..

 

[Liquidsys]

Your mirror question is easy. If you want to use a hard drive platter, you just need to take apart a hard drive and remove one. As I said, the hard part will be cutting it to size. Regarding glass first-surface mirrors, they are easily available from ebay in many sizes, just do a search.

As far as divergence, that's not quite as easy when you're talking about green lasers. Here's a thread about this very thing. It involves a handheld laser, but all of it applies to lab-style systems like yours as well. You could conceivably place lenses to help control the divergence, but they would have to be very precisely selected and mounted. It would be easiest to just use a beam-expander (which is discussed in the thread I just linked to). Hope this helps..

Yeah the Beam Expander seems to be something I'll want for the kinds of projects I'm thinking of doing.

Another question, we've mentioned the TTL adjustment wires for this lab-style laser up above previously... what is this for, and what would I hook it up to? I just disconnected the wires via the plug on the board, and the laser works just fine... am I missing out on something cool?

 

[ElektroFreak]

Another question, we've mentioned the TTL adjustment wires for this lab-style laser up above previously... what is this for, and what would I hook it up to? I just disconnected the wires via the plug on the board, and the laser works just fine... am I missing out on something cool?

Yes. The TTL input is for use in laser show scanners. This link contains a video of one of my scanners in action.

The TTL input on a laser accepts a signal that tells the laser when to blank (or turn off). By pulsating the laser and reflecting the beam off of a pair of motorized mirrors, it becomes possible to draw pictures, moving animations, and project beam shows. That's what that little connector is for, and yes, you are definitely missing out on something cool.

While the scanner in that video is not DIY, there's a wealth of information here and on www.photonlexicon.com regarding building your own scanners. You should most definitely consider it someday. You already have a great little laser that's just waiting to be used for shows..