SALT/PFIS Photographs

Laser Micro-Machining System

14 January 2004

The laser system arrived today. It was quite an ordeal getting this box off of the rather large truck, but we managed to get it up to the sixth floor. The system is bolted to a large wooden pallet. We left it on the pallet, but removed the cover before moving it into the room where it will be operated.

07-08 January 2004

Daniel Harbeck and I traveled to Wyckoff, New Jersey, to visit U.S. Laser, the vendor supplying us with a laser micro-machining system to be used in the fabrication of the multi-object slitmasks.

This is the complete system. It is an integrated setup, with a high-precision two-axis motorized stage for accurate placement of the sample under the laser beam, a TV viewing system co-aligned with the laser beam, a computer with a motion control board, and a lamp pumped Nd:YAG laser that can operate at either 1064 or 532 nm.

Left: Some of the elements in the laser cavity. From left to right: Power meter, safety shutter with front mirror, doubling crystal and spatial filter. Off the picture to the right would be the laser head, another spatial filter, beam polarizer and the back mirror. The green (532 nm) laser can be seen.

Right: Closeup of the laser head with the lid removed. Both the pumping lamp and the laser rod can be seen.

Left: Closeup of the motorized stage. The laser beam comes down through the tube at the top, which has a focusing lens at the bottom.

Right: TV viewing system. Bottom right is the laser collimator. Bottom left is the fold mirror for the laser. This only reflects at the laser wavelengths. It is transparent at other wavelengths; this allows the TV camera, top right, to see the sample that is being cut.