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B&W Tek OEM-10-473
This is an Nd:YAG laser which is designed to lase at the 946 nm line. It is pumped by an 808 nm diode, and the 946 nm is converted by SHG to 473 nm. More B&W Tek info at Sam's FAQ.
When first turned on it would start at a mW or so, then quickly slump into the micro-Watt region.
Looking down into the interior of the housing. There is a plastic box around the resonator, SHG crystal, and its TEC. Also, a metal cover over the anamorphic beam-shaping prisms.
It's easier to work on it with the case removed.
I cracked the edges of the prisms off by not understanding how their cover goes on.
Having given up on the original housing, and the hit-and-miss method of aligning five different optical components individually when the lenses and prisms should instead be all one unit, I removed the optics and and using a visible-light diode laser, re-aligned them glued to copper sheets.
Temperature control of the diode was a problem in the old housing, so a new base was constructed from aluminum and a CPU heatsink with fan.
A TEC sits on the CPU heat-sink. A block of aluminum to hold the diode and thermistor sits on that. A visible-light laser is being used to determine where to put the 808 nm diode on the aluminum block. The hole for the thermistor was drilled on the top, close to the diode.
Using a Verity monochromator and ILX Lightwave diode and TEC controller (both from Sam), I could optimize the diode temperature for production of 808.4 nm...
...as well as the SHG crystal temperature for 473 nm.
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