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[TSTwizby]

How disappointing.

What?

This would not only hold no benefit over a traditional design, it would be far worse in nearly every way. Simple is better, and most lasers do not like being moved while in operation. (Plus, the massive size of a laser compared to a mirror assembly (for example, the 10 watt sealed laser I used five years ago was ten times longer and about thirty times as heavy as the mirror mounting) means that you would have to scale up everything at a huge cost, any cooling tubes (or, if you're not using a sealed model, the gas feed) would have to be designed for the movements you want, and you risk damaging a very expensive bit of equipment if something doesn't move right.

Most of what you are saying seems to make no sense in the context of what I've tried to describe. I can't really think of anything to say to this.

I just thought of a cool effect your could potentially achieve with this system;

Cutting through a thick material or multiple layers spaced out, you could make an image that could only be clearly seen from an eyeball positioned exactly where the center of the 'hamster ball' was, when there is a diffuse light from behind the material.

Then, you shift the frame the distance between two average human eyes, and cut a second, slightly different image.

Result: a 3D image cut into the material that can only be seen from one precise point.

Or, cut a series of images the make an animation for people walking past, using the slitted fence effect. but that would be harder to keep the material solid enough.

That's a really neat idea. I'm pretty sure any kind of animation would be very limited, since the slitted fence effect would require there be fairly thin solid slices.

I don't think the rotation itself is that much of a problem if you're working at short distances, we can get to sub-millidegree precision nowadays, which probably would yield a deviation less than the diameter of the beam spot. A bigger problem would be that delivering a reliable voltage to a rotating system may be difficult. This can be solved by not rotating the lasing cavity, but shining the laser on a prism or mirror and rotating that. The problem of uneven laser intensities could be fixed by modulating the intensity of the laser depending on it's rotation and distance from the target.


However, since getting high precision with this system probably requires the use of advanced mechanics and the system can't reach around corners, I'm not sure it'd be better than a mechanical arm. One advantage could be that it's a lot smaller, requiring only a laser and a prism with suspension. Such a system could be carried in a suitcase and deployed on-site, for example, for rapid prototyping or on-site machining.


Also, have you done a patent search yet? I'd be highly surprised if no one ever thought of a similar system?

I like the prism/laser idea, but as you say yourself it is far beyond my actual capabilities at the moment. Again, this isn't something I'd intend to sell or even produce beyond the most basic level. Just a test of principal.

- snip -

Thanks for pointing out the problem of the power, now I feel like an idiot for not seeing it before. Virex has a solution to that though, which wouldn't be too complex to implement I think.
What I meant about calibration isn't for corrections that need to be made during operation, but for those which would need to be made prior. The hamsterball model has the point the laser rotates around defined in such a way as to guarantee that the laser will point radially outwards from it, and it is very easy to set things up so that it's easy to tell when the laser is pointing straight down. With a pair of motors on the other hand, the point of rotation is harder to find, and if the laser must be removed/gets jostled then everything needs to be recalculated.
I haven't been thinking about safety too much, apart from some easy hard limits on the rotation of the laser, but thanks for bringing it up. Again, this isn't something I'd be building in the near future, so there's a lot of stuff I haven't been thinking about.