User:Pranav Rathi/Notebook/OT/2011/03/01/Laser Shutter .2

The full detail is coming soon.

Motivation
Motivation behind designing the shutter is speed, accuracy and variability (time). In our optical tweezers we need to center the trap over the tethered bead, to get the geometry right(because this affects the force measurement)and make our feed-back program run. To center the tether we need to turn the laser intensity on/off quickly for variable time intervals. To do this we used to use AOM, because it’s extremely quick (nsec) and variable. So I needed some-thing which can replace this AOM function. This shutter does it exact. It is fast with opening time of 4 and closing time 2 μsec. Since the shutter runs on/with the active voltage (controlled by the toggle foot switch), it remains active with the applied voltage, with the freedom to chose any active time. The speed of the shutter can also be controlled. In design the laser passes through an aperture, and the only moving part is the cylinder. No gears, and no electronics in the actual shutter, makes this design very stable and accurate, even under the heat produced by the laser beam. This shutter needs no special power supply, it can be run through a cell phone charge with an output of roughly 300mA/5V. Cost and construction time is also important. With this design, a shutter can be prepared under $40 with 10 hours of construction time (10 x 25 (hourly wage of a technician)=$250+40=$290). Still better than many commercially available shutter systems with same performance.

Components
There are three major parts of the system.


 * Shutter.
 * Control box.
 * Power supply.

The components used: