Understanding Second Harmonic Generation: An intuitive introduction
In this article, I give a general introduction into frequency doubling (or second harmonic generation) which is a very useful process for creating laser light that can not efficiently be created directly by lasers.
High power pulsed Nd:YAG Laser: Design and Experiments
One of the most used laser material in high power lasers today is Nd:YAG. In this article I show you how I built an Nd:YAG laser that is capable of piercing through multiple razorblades at once.
Powerful UV nitrogen laser for pumping dye lasers
Design, construction and physics of a high power nitrogen laser capable of pumping dye lasers.
How to align plane-plane resonators for pulsed lasers
Aligning plane-plane resonators for pulsed lasers can be quite a challenge. In this article, I show you a reliable and precise method to do exactly that without the need of specialised equipment.
Diode pumped Pr:Ylf-Laser emitting at 640, 607 and 523nm.
In this article, I describe the design, construction and operation of a DPSS Pr:Ylf Laser which emits green, orange, and red laserlight.
Simple 532nm DPSS Laser
In order to calibrate a spectroscope, I built a simple green DPSS laser module. In this article, I describe how it works and what makes it special.
Continuos wave diode pumped ruby laser
In this article I show you how I built a ruby laser that is pumped by a laserdiode and emits continuos wave! This is one of the first laser systems of that type.
Building a laser galvo scanner from scratch using stepper motors
A short summary describing the build process of a 2D-Laser-Scanner using stepper motors and a cheap 650nm Laser diode. Completely built from scratch!
Simple full wave rectification using a homemade PCB
In this short project, I show you how full wave rectification of alternating current (AC) into direct durrent (DC) works and demonstrate this simple principle using a homemade PCB.
Making real rubies at home!
Though these are poor quality, polycrystalline rubies, they definitely are real rubies! In this article I show you how I made them and also show you some crystallographic images of the created rubies.
A close look at a 650nm laser diode
In this article, I show you the components of a laser diode and explain how they work together to create a stable output beam.
Analysing the grain structure of a TIG-welded billet.
Making crystallographic images at home using a normal incident light microscope is entirely possible, with some trickery. See here how I did it.
Acrylic frame for visualisation of crystalline structures in metals
A short build instruction on how to make this beautiful piece and what can be learned from the patterns it makes.