Collimator lens
Collimator lens
(OP)
Does anyone have any experience with these lenses? I have one on my old mazak and am wondering if they ever become stressed or dirty enough that it would effect cutting
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RE: Collimator lens
RE: Collimator lens
I regularly use polarizing filters on my focusing lens. I rarely see the tell tale "X" in the center of my lenses but often see little X's around the circumference. Does this classify as stress or is it just from the rings in my lens assembly? Also, I am still unclear what "mode" means as far as the laser? Beam roundness? Overall quality?
RE: Collimator lens
The mode is refered as the shape of the beam coming out of the resonator. It should be round, have the same angle all around and be fairly flat at the bottom (although this depends on the resonator manufacturer). But most importantly, the diameter and depth of the mode should not change too much between a cold and a hot mode. If the hot mode is getting a lot narrower and deeper, you have a stressed output coupler. I assume the same would happen with a stressed collimator.
RE: Collimator lens
RE: Collimator lens
"dirty" is a distinct possibility. There's just a lot of "stuff" in the air, such as pollution, soot, outgasses, that could deposit on lenses. They could degrade the transmission, as well as the apparent collimation itself, since they would tend to diffuse the laser energy. A more serious issue would be if the deposits are heavy enough to cause heating of the lenses. Non-uniform heating may cause thermal stresses that would affect collimator, but also may cause permanent damage to the lenses.
TTFN
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RE: Collimator lens
Or you can use a LCD screen; open a empty document or anything that would bring up a white page, or something white. Put the lens in front of the screen. Then take a polarizing filter and rotate it until no light goes through, then rotate the other way and inspect.