Hey /diy/, Im not sure if this belongs here or on /sci/ but I

>>1121674
i've never messed with diode lasers, but i have built a ruby laser that would burn through a razor blade and was powered off a car battery.

quite simply, your laser isn't lasing. or in laymens terms, the photons waves aren't aligned.

are your lenses made from polarized materials?

lasers work by reflecting light around a chamber with one exit and to get through the exit the wave has to be traveling directly out the exit as well as all the photons waves being aligned,

even if a photon is traveling in the right direction if its waveform is off it just gets reflected back into the chamber by a polarized material.

no polarized material and its just going to behave like a flashlight with high defraction.

>>1121685
Interesting, Im a complete amateur when it comes to working with lasers so this is all very helpful. Im not sure whether or not my laser is made of polarized materials, do you know how I might check? Seperately, since Ive seriously considered getting a new diode altogether, and the more powerful the better, how difficult/expensive was the ruby laser you built? The larger battery shouldnt be a problem in the grand scheme of the whole project I think.

>>1121685
Congrats on building a ruby laser, but your theoretical knowledge is horribly flawed.

1. The wave does not need to be traveling exactly perpendicular to the exit mirror. The beams go in all directions but the positive feedback formed by the parallel mirrors is what forms the singular beam.

2. The exit mirror does not filter or affect the wavelength of the laser. The laser medium is the one and only thing defining it.

3. Polarization has nothing to do with wave length (assuming that's what you mean by waveform?).

>>1121700
I actually hadnt touched the laser for a while when i started this thread, and I just hooked the driver circuit and battery back up to see if there was anything else I could mention that would help. Now the laser actually wont turn on at all, even though its hooked up exactly the same as before. Im seriously considering scrapping the diode and getting a new one, but Id like to figure out what I should do properly this time, can you anons help me out? Mostly with how to put everything together properly and vendors I guess?

easiest way to check to see if your lenses are polarized is to to look through them both at once. if they are polarized you won't be able to see through them unless you rotate one and they align, if they are off while looking through both you you won't see anything.

hardest part of the ruby laser is polishing the chamber. all you do is pump enough electricity through a laser rated ruby and it will emit light. i never cooled it, so it it was only on for a second or so and i had to wait hours between shots for it to cool down on its own.

this was around 20 years ago and it cost around $200 not including the battery. its like 70 year old technology.

>>1121704
Thanks, the only thing is right now I only have one lens, thats all there is room for in the chamber. When I was fumblung around trying to see what was wrong though I did try putting two lenses in front of one another, but that didnt solve the problem either. The housing only came with one lens so I dont think its meant to be polarized.

That might actually make it ineffective for this project, the laser would likely need to be turned on repetitively, so the couple hour wait time might mean that I need to stick to a diode laser

>>1121700
lol i never went to school for this,

i don't mean wavelength, i know thats color (visible spectrum anyways).

what i mean by waveforms being aligned is the waves themselves are aligned.

how can my tired ass explain this. picture a snake on traveling on the ground, now picture a snake somehow defying gravity and traveling along a wall. those waveforms the snakes move in are off 90 degrees. when they are aligned they travel on the same plane due to the polarized material.

>>1121710

You're referring to their being in or out of phase. Now google.

>>1121702
Did you overload it? LED lasers are basically overdriven LEDs and work in a narrow current window that also changes with temperature.

Ya'll niggas better read up on laser safety asap.

>>1121786
No
A laser LED is very different to a normal one.

>>1121714
He's referring to the polarity though

>>1121674
>the laser doesn't focus into a nearly straight beam
pretty much absolutely nothing to do with it being a laser, simple case of you apparently having no grasp of how lenses work or what they do.
where are your calculations?
you need to know the divergence of the beam without any lens. you will probably need two lenses unless the beam is converging, one to converge and a second to make it all nice and parallel.
you need to know the focal lengths of your lenses and beam essentially.
just putting a lens in front of a source is fucking retard read it on a forum tier.

>>1121674
OP, you propably killed ot then. Can you post a pic of the beam on a white surface without the lens inserted?
It has probably "LED'ed", meaning that it is not as powerfull anymore and thus making it a fancy LED light.