Come join the insanity. More fun than a bag of cats.
A quick update and demonstration of how critical keeping the KTP a constant temperature is.
My MATLAB laser simulation makes some predictions.
So I built a laser last year. It worked but didn’t perform great. Let’s find out why.
I’m going to start digging more in to the physics part of my laser project and for this I will want to be able to render some math.
It’s time to build a chassis and case for the laser.
Now that I have proof I can make the laser work, it’s time to tackle getting the Z-Fold cavity to lase.
Getting my homemade laser to lase.
So far I’ve had a lot of posts describing the electronics if this project, but the real meat of the thing is the physics and optics. It’s time to start digging in.
I’ve finished the control board for The Laser Project. This is a small AVR-based microcontroller board with a simple OLED screen and a rotary encoder for making selections.
I needed to revise the power board I’m using for driving the pump laser diodes. The current power board is still a little noisy — it doesn’t work at all if you don’t have an EMI filter on the data bus, and it will stop working if you turn the current up too high. Also, since I designed it I changed how the bus interface connector is going to work. Time for another revision!
The final TEC board is done and appears to work great.
My second prototype TEC controller was a bit of a failure but the same circuit on a real board fares much better.
I redesigned my TEC controller to use the LTC1923 chip so I can use higher powers on the outputs.
The next board to design is a TEC controller board to control temperatures of the laser.
A lot has happened since I “finished” the power supply I plan to use for The Laser Project. It turns out I wasn’t as done as I thought.
Summary of my custom designed power supply.
I’m going to start a series of posts chronicling my attempt to build a laser…mostly from scratch.
In the next series of “stuff I have to build so I can build a laser” is a meter for measuring the output power of lasers.
A recent electronics project I built shows I’m way too immersed in my hobbies.
Protesting the outcome of the election means to protest democracy, and Americans are better than that.
There's a problem that's been nagging me since Apple got rid of Aperture and iPhoto and merged them into the mess that is Photos.
A full day for us at Universal Orlando. From roller coasters to butter beer, we tried it all.
For Cole's spring break we went to Florida to hit both Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks. For the last two days we've been exploring Disney's Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom parks.
I've caved completely and moved my entire blog to SquareSpace.
For vacation this year, we rented a 25’ RV and drove to Yellowstone.
One bathroom and a partially finished basement. It was only a matter of time. This year we decided it was time to do some remodeling on the house. By "some remodeling" I mean a whole lot of remodeling.
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It’s spring 2024 and the laser work marches slowly on.