on today's maker mashup quick tip i'm going to
show you how to focus your diode laser down to a super fine point
so on today's maker mashup we're going to be focusing our diode laser module now this really
applies to any diode laser module however in today's video we're going to be doing it
on the l301 now this is a core xy laser engraver cutter that you can build yourself and there's a
card up at the top if you haven't seen that video if you're interested in building one yourself so
there are a number of different ways that you can focus both the co2 and a diode laser this video
is really only going to cover how we're going to focus our diode laser to be able to use it for
engraving or to use it for cutting what i find as a real difficulty in trying to focus diode lasers
is that depending on the material that you're focusing it on and the amount of light bleed
that you get from a diode laser it's very hard to see and be able to get a really fine focal point
now the reason is because of all that light bleed what happens is when it hits a material that light
is then diffused through the material so it makes using things like a piece of paper or a piece of
cardboard very difficult so what i'm going to be showing you today is along with your safety
glasses we're going to use this red filter that is going to allow us to see a very very fine point
of our blue diode laser so with all that said let's get to work okay so you can see here i've
got my laser on and i have it at about 10 power so it's a little bit stronger but then it allows me
to really get a good view as to where my focal point is now as you can see here on the camera
and it it's impossible for me to really see this except with the camera because
the safety glasses i'm using completely block that nanometer of light so i can't see anything
on the black business card unless i'm looking at the uh video camera here that is on the display
now as you can see here on the display the bright blue light that you're seeing being emitted here
is a lot of light bleed now what i'm going to do is put this filter in front of the camera
here and you'll be able to see the difference that this filter applies to what you're seeing
okay so now you see a very very small point because we've got that light bleed reduced
now this filter if you turn it there's a way to adjust the filter and apply more or less
of the filter effect on here and what it's doing is changing the wavelengths
that are being filtered now you can see here i've almost got that point to completely disappear
so before and after now because that is not a very focused point it barely shows up on the camera
here so now what i'm going to do is focus this so just by adjusting this here and using the filter
you'll see the intensity of that spot increase so that way you can get it down to an extremely fine
point so now that this is down to a sharp point i can see with my safety glasses that is a very very
fine point so by using both of these together and by adjusting the wavelength of the filter you're
able to get a finer point and be able to see where that fine point is without the light bleed
so as you can see this filter really did a great job at reducing all of the light bleed and
allowing us to get a much finer focal point on our laser than we did with our safety glasses alone
now this filter is relatively inexpensive i was able to get this off of amazon for about
thirty dollars it's just a specific filter for video cameras or cameras i got one of the larger
ones that was relatively inexpensive and it is adjustable so you can go all the way from a 530
where you can see it's slightly red and you can see through it down to a 750 nanometer which
makes it fairly opaque but when the laser is on you can still see that light coming through from
that focal point that really gives us the ability to get it to a sharp point now since this is my
new favorite way to focus my diode laser what i'm probably going to do is build a little stand for
this so that way i can keep my hands free and i'll update the description below once i've got
that model done so along with links to the filter in the description i'm also going to include links
to those black business cards they're very thin they work really well you can engrave them as well
and i'll be covering those in an upcoming video but they work really well for reducing light
bleed and then with this filter really giving you the ability to get down to that fine point
now i would love to hear your method for focusing your diode laser and how successful you are with
it personally i think this is a great way but i'm always interested in new techniques so if you have
one please let me know down in the comments so with that it's going to bring the end of
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so with all of that said i want to say thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time
you