Laser galvanometer scribbles from discarded pen recorder from dumpster diving at the Physics Dept. Yes, it looks two dimensional as I moved the camera in a circle during the exposure. “Continue reading” for more galvanometer information.
The left photo shows the pen recorder unit. This would normally drive a pen on a moving roll of paper (like a seismograph). It is 1981 vintage and has offset, gain and calibration controls. Full scale deflection seems to be about 0.1 V and frequency response seems to go up to about 70 Hz. Sadly, I didn’t pick up the second one. The right photo shows the beam from a 5 mW red diode laser reflected by a mirror. The unit is fed from my frequency generator at about 70 Hz and the result is a horizontal stripe.
The circular motion is simply me rotating the camera by hand with a 1 second exposure hence laser galvanometer 1d. This brings out the sine wave signal and the 4 volt meters of my power supply.
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AerogelExternal links
Mirror Galvanometer – Wikipedia
Photo Date: 2006