"Home Made" holography components

holomaker · Post by **holomaker** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:53 pm

I thought it would be helpful to new holographers to show them what equipment can be made using common materials. I realize its a lot easier today to acquire top notch components off Ebay and the like, but it might be fun looking at everyone early (and ugly) attempts anyway.......................

holomaker · Post by **holomaker** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:36 pm

Here is an example of gravity bases, they are easy to make and quite stable.

items you need;
steel rod
3" pvc pipe
plaster of paris
scraps of steel or lead
board w/1/2" dia hole in it
three round head screws

Start with a 12" long x 1/2"dia steel rod,
Take a piece of smooth piece wood and drill a 1/2 dia hole in it to accept your rod nicely.
Now get some 3-4" PVC pipe and cut it to 4 inches lengths
Attach wood to bench top so steel rod runs verticly, leaving end sticking up 3.5 inches or so out of top
Now place your PVC pipe on wood over rod (offset rod, not on center)
Mixup Plaster of Paris and fill PVC fitting with it as well as scrap steel or better lead (pack in as much as possible!)
You will see in the pix I cut feet into the pvc, as an option you can set the three screws into the plaster making a nice kenetic mount.
After a short setting time the base and rod are pulled out off the board and the base is now complete.
Paint after Plaster is completely dry (week or two), I made these easliy 20 years back and i still use the bases form time to time!

Arturo · Post by **Arturo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:24 pm

I know I am going to love this thread. Thanks!

holomaker · Post by **holomaker** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:48 pm

Here's another one , its an attempt to make a variable density beam splitter. It's made from a microscope rack and pinion rail and an Inconel slide. It works but the reflected beam walks a bit !

holomaker · Post by **holomaker** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:33 am

I have here to show today is my "Flip mirror mount , made from an old Strap hinge, the pivot was a little loose so i smashed it with a hammer a few times and it's nice and tight now. After all, Holodisc did call me "a hack"

This is handy for multi exposuers and combinding lasers....

Arturo wrote:I know I am going to love this thread. Thanks!

Me too if we can get some other posters to chime in......

Mihai · Post by **Mihai** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:34 am

Soon I will post some pictures with a spatial filter that i am working on, an some other optical mounts. I olso have some small front surface mirrors made from old hard-drive plates.

Johnfp · Post by **Johnfp** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:06 am

Nice thread. I put something together a long time ago and sure enough it was still on my web site. I believe I was doing DCG at the time so not everythign may be needed for Silver Holography. But here it is anyway.

Everyday Items for Holography
http://www.holograms3d.com/TheLab/Every ... graphy.htm

holorefugee · Post by **holorefugee** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:52 pm

My lab is in storage so I can't take a picture but I needed a beam dump. I made a 2" square box with a 10mm hole on the front. I placed a cone on the back side of the box to spread the light. The cone was 1" high and 1" wide. This entire box was made from black paper and could keep a 100mw laser beam from reflecting back into the laser. I was getting mode hops from back reflections so I made the shutter a mirror that bounced the beam to a beam dump.

Arturo · Post by **Arturo** » Mon Feb 27, 2012 5:35 am

holorefugee wrote:My lab is in storage so I can't take a picture but I needed a beam dump. I made a 2" square box with a 10mm hole on the front. I placed a cone on the back side of the box to spread the light. The cone was 1" high and 1" wide. This entire box was made from black paper and could keep a 100mw laser beam from reflecting back into the laser. I was getting mode hops from back reflections so I made the shutter a mirror that bounced the beam to a beam dump.

I am not sure I understand correctly the design... Could you please draw a simple sketch of the box? Thanks.

Jeffrey Weil · Post by **Jeffrey Weil** » Mon Feb 27, 2012 4:20 pm

Hello Everyone,

I'm planing on posting a few things I've made in this thread. Some will be very "homemade" and others will require machine tools like milling machines and lathes.

Lets start with something not needing advanced tooling.

A pro aperture.

A while ago on this forum the subject of apertures came up. Blockers and gobo's with holes in them to allow beams or spread beams to pass. Like a card with a square hole used to keep the spatial filters reference light from hitting everything. Stuff like that.

For my whole career I used foamcore board with square holes cut it them. I would take a short piece of 2x4 and with a table saw make a slot in one of the faces. I would place that on the table and stick the right piece of foamcore in the slot. Sometimes I would cut the hole larger than needed and with some tape and strips of ruby-lith make custom sizes.

When the discussion of the apertures came up BobH said that they should be viewed as pieces of equipment just like anything else on the table. Good point.

So I got rid of all the crappy foamcore and made these.

I have a few of them on the table. They don't even need a table saw to make. Just a pair of scissors and some glue. It's a standard cheep mag base, although it does use the knuckles from two bases. I took the mounting posts out of the knuckles and replaced them with some small antennas. You can get them at Radio Shack or just salvage them from something. You can see the red tip of one of them in the shot. The knuckles can easily crush the thin antennas so I glued them into short pieces of pipe that can handle the pressure and still fit inside the hole designed for the mounting posts.

The pipe is a bit of concrete anchor sold at Ace hardware. No cutting needed. Just remove the screw from the tube and cap the end with some hot glue or tape so the epoxy you use to fix the antenna inside doesn't leak out before it dries.

Then I pulled out the thinest section of the antennas and glued some thin black plastic to them. The plastic is cut into two framing squares. The material came from some nice plastic school folders sold at Walgreens, 2 bucks.

Now I can make any sized square aperture needed without messing about with tape and ruby lith. Plus, they don't get accidentally moved as they are magnetically locked down.

To change the size just move the knuckles closer or further apart for one axis and raise or lower the antennas for the other. Using the knuckles you can even tilt the framing squares for keystone correction. The mounts with the adjustable arm are very nice to use for this.

Ah, I forgot something. I didn't glue the antennas directly to the thin antenna section. It would be difficult to remove if I needed to replace the plastic. Before I applied the glue I put some shrink tubing around the thin section, then glued. So, if I want I can cut through the hot glue I used and the shrink tubing and cleanly remove the plastic from the antenna.

I'm very happy with them. Much better than what I was using. Thanks BobH.

Jeff W