Mirror and Laser Holders for Science Olympiad by kovo

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

My daughter wanted some mirrors and a laser to practice with for the Science Olympiad optics event. I printed 5 mirror holders and 1 laser holder in ABS for that purpose. You could probably adapt these to a number of optics purposes.
For the mirrors, I ordered these 50mm x 50 mm mirrors (https://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-mirrors/flat-mirrors/50.8-x-50.8mm-4-6lambda-mirror/), which said they were first surface mirrors, but they were not. That is probably OK for SciOly practice. We affixed the mirrors to the mounts with double stick tape, though there is a bottom lip for the mirror to rest on. Since ABS can curl a little, the lip may or may not hold the mirror square to the surface it rests on (sigh).
The laser was a generic laser pointer we bought from Office Depot. The laser barrel was about 14mm diameter, with an on light and on button that required a 0.5 mm clearance. I used this to make a sort of "switch" for the laser. The hole for the laser pointer looks more like a keyway, with a small 1mm or so notch at the bottom. When installing the laser pointer, orient the switch and on light so they can go through the notch. Push the on light through, but leave the laser pointer button in the notch. This is the laser "off" state. When you want to turn it on, just rotate the laser so the switch comes out of the notch, and then the mount with hold it down in the "on" state. You will probably need to print with support, and clean up the hole/keyway with a set of files to get the fit to work well. You'll probably need to modify the part for whatever laser pointer you have.
I have included the CAD files in the FreeCAD format. I know that is maybe not standard, but it is FOSS and works on a lot of platforms.