Diode lasers---Under the Hood 08 @SarbarMultimedia

Uploaded April 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

The more I play with this silly 5 watt diode laser the more I am understanding the many misunderstandings that people have about the technology. Passing a very thin beam through a lens is fraught with focus and intensity issues This session explores how focussing just 5 watts in a different way can inprove its engraving power. There may also be consequences for cutting that will be sddressed in a future session. The subject of my "sunglasses " and laser beam safety keeps popping up and there are many videos offering advice on the dangers of diode laser light . None offer any sceintic reasoning to quantify the dangers they speak of. In this session I explain what the REAL risks are and the science that justifies them.
I try to check the claimed 5 watt power specification and find the usual stretched truth in the specification.

$RDWorks Learning Lab 246 SPHERICAL ABERRATION. Our New Best Friend I have made several videos documenting my discoveries about the relationship that laser beams and lenses enjoy. Normal optics is well established for telecopes , cameras and microscopes etc These products use glass lenses to focus regular light images. Laser light obeys all the same laws of refraction that govern lens design but the non-uniform intensity profile within a laser beam sets it apart from normal light and the age-old predictions of lens theory about what happens after a focal point are no longer valid. For laser cutting, the beam stops at the surface of the material (usually the focal point) and light energy transforms to molecular kinetic enegy to effect material damage. There is no after the focal point as described by normal lens theory because we are not transmitting IMAGES. I have spent several years experimenting with lenses and laser beams in an attempt to understand the mechanism that allows cutting to happen below the focal point when conventional logic predicts otherwise. I reached an understanding of the basic cutting mechanism several months ago, but recent research into spherical aberration has allowed me to fully understand the many damage profiles and unanswered details I have obseved during my test work. I feel I have now fully masterered the many interwoven factors that allow this cutting miracle we all take for granted. I have created a PDF document called The Dark side of Lenses that is the basis of this video. it is a synopsis of my 3 year journey searching for this mechanism of cutting that I was unable to find described elsewhere. Hopefully it explains and demonstrates the many jigsaw pieces that build to a final picture. That PDF file can be seen and downloaded from https://laseruser.com/dark-side-of-the-laser-lens/ or www.rdworkslab.com The aberration simulator player: https://support.wolfram.com/topic/wolfram-player/download-installation The aberration simulation is : https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SphericalLensAberration/$

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