Welcome to W's Laser-Projects page!
I was reviving my laser hobby from school time... as I do feel an urge to do something practical and swing
the soldering iron once in a while, or just contemplate upon the beauty
of a beam of coherent light!
This is mainly for the fun of tinkering with
electronics and building stuff, but I do a bit of holography as well, in order
to have a good use of my lasers. And no, I don't have any commercial interests.
Below I have set up some notes about my laser-related projects; I wish them to be helpful to other laser enthusiasts, much like I appreciated detailed help from many others. A lot of it is outdated by now and may look a bit naive with hindsight.
I also run a blog, for discussions and announcements.
Recents
Website updated thanks to Claude Code
in prep: ultra stable TEC PWM controller with ESP-32 plus laser driver
Gallery
Gallery of holograms (outdated)
Single mode diode lasers for holography
Laser design studies:
- Design requirements for single mode diode lasers (2011, somewhat outdated)
- Ongoing development of highly stable diode drivers and TEC controllers for diode holography
- Arduino-based high precision TEC controller for laser diode holography (2017)
- General remarks on single mode ECDL lasers (revamped 2022)
- Investigations of the Osram PL530 530nm optically pumped semiconductor laser (OPSL), incl driver board (2021)
- Investigations of the Pico projector "White Light Engine" (2022)
- Reviving a New Focus Vortex Series TLB 7000 Extended Cavity Laser
Diode tests (ongoing but slow):
- Detailed mode analysis of various popular consumer-type laser diodes, incl summary (updated 2022)
- Esp. promising: Ushio HL63643DG, also ECDL version added, works extremely well! (2022)
- Tests of various diodes in ECDL setups (updated 2022)
Laser spectrum analysis with regard to coherence length
A number of lasers, like Coherent Compass and Sapphire, Lexel 88, etc., is tested.
Home-built instrumentation:
- Fabry-Perot scanning interferometer: checking longitudinal mode structure of various lasers (2009)
- Optical spectrum analyzer with CCD sensor readout and 0.006nm resolution (2006)
Some major and/or more interesting projects
- High precision, low noise digital laser diode controller desktop system (2022)
- Home brew controller for the Coherent Compass 315M100 DPSS laser head, with USB computer interface
Details: laser diode driver, TEC controllers, digital USB interface, measurements - Reprogramming the Newport 835 power meter for data from 818-series sensor calibration modules (2009)
- Remarks about the Burleigh Wavemeter Jr WA-2000/2500, incl LabVIEW driver (2011)
- Revitalizing the Coherent Sapphire 488-20 (2011)
- Converting the OEM Lexel 88 argon laser head for holography (2004)
Home-built ion laser 6KW switchmode power supply, old linearly regulated version (2005)
Some utilities, schematics, diagrams, tests and other minor projects
- My holography technical setup (2005, outdated)
- Generate interactively ready-to-use exposure time diagrams for holography, for cheap integrated light sensors and common films (nonoperational..) (2005)
- Info on monolithic light sensors for holography use, incl. an easy-to-build exposure meter (2005)
- Simple precision transimpedance amplifier for use with Newport 818-series detectors (2010)
- Remarks on the SDL-800 laser diode/TEC controller; incl. modifications for avoiding temperature oscillations and running blue diodes such as the 1W Nichia (2010)
- Remarks about the Rofin-Sinar RSO 6000 scanning monochromator/optical spectrum analyzer (2009)
- Cooling water interlock circuit using flow wheel
- Various film sizes compared to various collimation mirror sizes, for normal and Brewster angle illumination
- Simple PWM peltier driver for cooling high power laser diodes (2009)
- Super simple PWM peltier driver for low power laser diodes (2010)
- Converting a 780nm single mode extended cavity (ECDL) laser to visible red (2010)
- Wideband, low noise photodiode amplifier (2009)
- Noise detector for monitoring mode jumps (2010)
- Precision instrumentation (2011)
- Science-Surplus spectrometer (2012)
- The Low Noise Zener Diode 2DW23x (2017)
- Low Noise Amplifiers and Voltage References (2017)
- Remarks on Aliexpress low-noise linear regulator boards based on LT3045 (2021)
- Some prehistoric older lasers
- Memories of old times as a radio amateur...
May 2026