Several months ago we wrote a short write up about making a cheap optical shutter out of a hard drive disk controlled via Arduino.
Since then we have had two Uniblitz shutters fail. We have now seen 6 Uniblitz shutters seen fail relatively quickly, with different users and different use conditions, over three labs. Even when they aren’t broken, they’re still kinda broken. So what can you do?
You can buy shutters from ThorLabs, but it will still run you $1000. So we’re back at the topic of cheap optical shutters, and we’d love to hear your suggestions. One suggestion has been ordering shutters from EOPC, or from Daco Instruments. If anyone has experience using these companies shutters write in!
For the previously covered hard disk drive voice-coil actuator design there is a nice Inscrutable for it that we didn’t originally link to, and the original designer has a fairly nice website dedicated to DIY and cheap shutter knowledge.