Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Clever!!



From: jmelson2 Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 00:52



Well, I actually built the laser pattern component. What I did was get a
roll of communication optical fiber. I stripped one end of 8 fibers and
carefully scraped off the protective plastic cladding, just leaving the bare
glass fiber. I machined a round part that split down the middle, and then
made a groove in one side that was 125 um deep and 1 mm wide, and laid the 8
125 um OD fibers side by side in the groove, smeared a little epoxy on it
and then clamped the other piece over it. When the epoxy cured, I cleaved
the fibers and polished the whole thing. I proved I could rig up a laser and
sphere lens to light the fiber. I have no idea how much of the light
actually made it into the fiber, or how efficiently the fiber radiated the
light out the other end. So, the plotter worked well enough that I put it
into use and never completed the 8-beam modification.

Yes, you'd have to deal with rotation of the fiber array, PLUS getting the
magnification just right so the 8 beams all fell in the right raster lines.
I can imagine test patterns that would help in making the adjustments.
Jon



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