Re: RPL laser "dual beam" issue = wasted power dem
koti said:
Well my RPL-225 has 1 single beam when I unscrew the top like You do on the film.
Maybe the funky looking silver ones are screwed up?
Well mine is silver because it gets used like a tool, the finish was getting bad (worn through on the edges) so I removed all the black paint. Besides that it's no different than your typical RPL.
Most RPL lasers will not show dual beams if the barrel is unscrewed because the final endpiece with a tiny hole drilled serves the purpose to hide this characteristic. This is important because the purpose of a DPSS laser is to produce green obviously. Discarding nearly half is not good. If you bought a Porsche 911 twin turbo knowing the engine could put out 900bhp but really put out 500 in real life wouldn't you be upset?
I'm thinking of just tearing this one completely down as it's obvious in the video that it's not of very decent quality even when run on lower power levels. I've been running the shit out of it too on levels as high as 8 until the battery dies with no noticeable performance trends. That makes me think about stripping the guts and turning this into a 2+ WATT 808 nM laser searchlight. With a variable focus optical train it would make for some nice night vision assist work. ;D Well focused it could be used to "tell" others where to go. (and that's all I'll say about that!)
If the expander is removed the pair of beams is still there with lower divergence on each and much narrower angle. With as many of these lasers in the intermediate to advanced hobbyist sector I cannot believe no one else has found or made mention of this. I guess it could be the fact that it cost over a grand and they don't want to tear it apart. ;D
pseudonomen137 said:
[quote author=Nordhavn link=1193076198/0#2 date=1193078313]
HOWEVER, if the light is indeed polarized, perhaps a birefringent coating is to blame? That would make perfect sense... in its own way...
Yeah but nearly 50% of all green? I need to run this through my profiler but the power is too high for the attentuators I have. Will the bare module run at very low power (just over pump threshold) from a bench supply?
Oh and let me add the reason why the laser was sent back for repair was due to mechanical (shock) damage. It was exposed to high SPL of a large subwoofer array which changed its divergence. (not a matter of adjusting the collimator) Since the Vanadate/KTP elements were previously disassembled about this time last year and reset with epoxy I decided to get the unit repaired. Also the little dial on the switch with the numbers 0-9 had fallen off just exposing the switch (that was fixed by jamming a #0 reed and prince bit heated to 300C into the plastic.) I knew something was up when there was a new switch module installed in the end cap. There was also a new label on the inside with a new SN and (most importantly) ending in -250mW. I'm told all these modules are 250mW spec'd; some do better than others and that's how your seller bins and prices them accordingly. It's like buying CPU's in the old days where you could buy a pretested AXIA TBird 1400 doing 1700 for about $100 more and have a guaranteed stable chip at a speed that didn't commercially exist. (Not all those were 100% stable as well but you get the point!)
The original laser had the dual beams as does this one. I had PPL's that were returned so I never got a chance to see if they had this issue. They did not have near the divergence of the RPL however.
(CNI pointers) But I will add that they do NOT have two beams.
