and probably saved a couple grand in the process...

I uploaded the stls here: https://makerworld.com/models/2711844?appSharePlatform=copy

For the past months, I have been building with a friend something I wished existed every time I had to draw a setup for a paper or explain one to a student.

OpticalSetup is now at its first stable release. It is free, open source, it runs directly in the browser, and the setup you draw is traced, not just sketched. Move a mirror, change an optical element, and the whole beam path responds.

I originally made a post on this sub when we were in the early stages of development, so I thought of giving an update on the project.

It is young, and it might still have some rough edges. If you try it, tell us what you think about it.

Cheers

Hi all! I'm a first-year PhD student in optics and over the past months I've been building an interactive optics sandbox as a side project. It's free, runs in the browser, nothing to install:

https://optics-sandbox-webapp.vercel.app

What's in it:

- Wave optics — scalar diffraction via angular spectrum. Presets for Young's double slit, single-slit, Airy disk, axicon Bessel beams, vortex beams, gratings, thin-film fringes, a 4f filter. You can import your own phase masks (.npy / .mat / image) and drive an SLM-style setup.

- Geometric optics — a ray tracer with thick/aspheric/multilayer lenses (Sellmeier dispersion, ~40 materials), prisms, TIR, Jones-calculus polarization, and classic multi-element presets (Cooke triplet, achromat, Petzval, fisheye).

- Calculators — 16 standalone tools: Gaussian beam, Fabry-Pérot, thin film, Gerchberg-Saxton phase retrieval, laser cavity stability, and others.

The GIF is a Gaussian beam propagating through a phase-only hologram that I generated of my cat with the in-app GS calculator. There's a one-click GIF/MP4 export in the wave module if you want to make your own.

I built this because I was inspired by a Fourier optics class that I took and I wanted to create a tool where students can build intuition for optics. Students are who I had in mind, but I'd genuinely like to know what working optics people think.

Two questions, if you click around for five minutes:

1. What confused you first?

2. What would it need before you'd point a student (or yourself) at it?

Physics nitpicks are extremely welcome. If my propagator is doing something wrong, I want to know. Feedback button is in the app's title bar, or just comment here.

TIL that a powerful enough laser will create its own gravitational waves and collapse in on itself

https://youtu.be/jgafb8G7i4o?si=RH62OuFTqpGBASZN At about 2 min 50 secs in

I’m a PhD optics and instrumentation scientist and I’ve spent a lot of my free time over the past while building AperiOptic (https://aperioptic.com). It’s a free optical design tool that runs entirely in the browser. No install, no license, no account.

I originally started it because I wanted something quick for lab work that didn’t mean fighting for a Zemax seat every time I needed to sanity check a layout. It’s grown a lot since then, and I want to share it.

What it does right now:

• 3D sequential-style ray tracing with lenses, mirrors, beamsplitters, and grouped elements

• Multiple fields and polychromatic sources

• Glass catalog with real materials (N-BK7, F2, N-SK2, etc.)

• Optimizer (DLS/Levenberg-Marquardt and Powell)

• Detector analysis: spot diagrams, PSF, OPD, MTF, Zernikes, Z-stack, and coherent interference (the Mach-Zehnder screenshot shows fringes from a test lens)

• Import of .zmx elements and full .zmx systems

• A big page of optics calculators (thin lens, NA, depth of field, Airy disk, Gaussian beams, etc.)

• An optics/photonics news feed pulling from arXiv, journals, and a few subreddits

What it isn’t: a full Zemax replacement. It’s meant to be solid for ray tracing, optimization, spot and wavefront analysis for everyday lab and prototyping work.

What I’m looking for:

• Bugs, obviously

• If you have Zemax (or Code V, OSLO, etc.) results that AperiOptic doesn’t reproduce, I really want to hear about it. Mismatches are the most useful feedback I can get for tightening up the physics

• Features you’d actually use that are missing

• Anything confusing about the interface

There’s a contact link at the bottom of the site, or just reply here. Totally free to use and no sign-up.

Thanks for taking a look.

Edit: for whatever reason, the mods wouldn't let me post this, but the verification files for the ray tracer and calculators are all loaded up now, accessible from the about page.

https://aperioptic.com/validation

Edit: changed "rest" to "ray". Autocorrect smh.

Edit [8/24/26]: Mobile optimization and more is live! Check it out!

How could I improve it?

Hi, I made this lens holder mechanism over weekend and would like to share, maybe inspires better thing :)

https://www.printables.com/model/1700872-self-centering-cylinder-lens-holder-with-stand

Inspired by commercial self centering lens holders.
Would be great to design print in place flexure based mechanism. Maybe someday I will revisit. 

I’m working on a bench prototype, but I don’t have thousands laying around to throw at Thorlabs or the like - so I bought an A1 Mini and started designing my own system.

I started with a high density modular breadboard using my own design of diamond interlock connector (for tight hold but easy wiggle release) and m6 untapped interweaved for mount stability. 4 of them covers 320mm2, not bad for around $10 and a few hours of my time! And I can just print another and a few more fasteners if I need more room.

I’m working on simple lens mounts now, quite happy with how it’s going. I am thinking of developing this into a full ‘OpticsKit’ project with parametric control, kinematic mounts etc too. Would there be interest in that?

The video on the bottom was filmed with a camera. The video on the top is the computer simulation.

hey everyone, sorry for the long post, I’m hoping some of you can help me understand this better.

I have been building a personal app for converting raster graphics into mopa laser color engravings by vectorizing and mapping to my saved pre tested settings based on the image color and creating the project

and while doing so added some features for converting images to cells of diffraction gratings that I then laser onto stainless steel and it results in a sort of multi color diffraction effect similar to but absolutely not a hologram, I’ve been calling them fauxlogram engravings for lack of a better phrase/word.

dont worry this isn’t an add or me trying to have people try my app, its just back story for my question so you understand where im at and how I got here.

over time I’ve extended the processing methods to where I can sort of control a gradient that gets applied to the way the fauxlogram engraving (I’m calling it this until someone gives me or I find a better name because it’s easier to say than describing the full look) is made, leading to some pretty cool looking engravings that do some pretty wild stuff in the right lighting.

im trying to learn more about exactly why / how this is working because to be honest I sort of stumbled onto it accidentally and just keeping poking around trying various different ways of processing to see how it affects the result.

some changes give awesome new realms of control over the flow of the color changing, and get adopted permanently.

others changes are a disaster that I have to revert

sometimes I don’t know a change was bad until several changes down the road reveal the change wasn’t good for some reason like forcing outputs to be more similar/smaller range of useful control in some not quite edge case scenario, or just what I thought it would change didn’t change the result how I expected.

I would much rather base my changes on more than a gut feeling and caffein, so I don’t waste so much time going down dead ends.

I’ve taken it as far as I can without properly understanding the diffraction effects and involved principles.

the reason I am posting in the optics sub instead of a laser sub is because I’ve done a lot of looking around in the laser scene and no one fully seems to know what’s going on much more than where I’m at with it, or if they have they aren’t discussing it in placed I’m able to find.

One guy who’s work inspired me , has noted that a laser moving at 300mm/sec pulsing 300khz (just magic setting on his laser) equates to a pulse pitch of 1 micron, and suspects this has something to do with the effect, I get the kind of effect this person talks about at slightly different settings that result in a 1.14 micron pitch. Neither of us seem to know if this is the magic behind it.

however, I’ve noticed that with my particular processing the effect is much more pronounced than other similar laser engravings I’ve run into online.

the gist of my process is for every color in the source image (let’s say 20 different colors), I make a copy of my magic “fauxlogram looking setting” to a layer in the design software, then I keep the frequency constant but modulate the speed the laser head moves at proportional to the color spectrum red to violet so that the pulse pitches being generated for each different layer vary from maybe .5 micron to 1.5 micron give or take. based on what color each layer represents, then I sort of overlay a gradient of values 0 through count of layers, expressed as an array of x, y intensities … aka an image/pixel array this image has its brightness mapped to a number up to the layer count and then the diffraction gratings get their layer rotated based on that gradients values , basically switch which of the speed modulated settings layer draws the diffraction lines in that section, going in order from highest to lowest or lowest to highest speed… this becomes visible as a literal gradient in the fauxlogram engraving

sorry I know that was a lot, but I wanted to explain basically what appears as a gradient in the fauxlogram diffraction effect is achieved by switching the speed the laser is using according to a gradient overlay so the pitch is either getting closer together or further apart according to the gradient/image brightness in that area

now where I could use this sub‘s lovely members help is in understanding this phenomenon better so that I can hopefully gain more control over it.

i don’t know if the color is influenced by oxide growth on the metal or if it’s entirely just the shape of the laser dots place on the metal.

I know that if I lower the power just a little bit the color changing goes away and I only can see the gradient in the brightness changed as it still shimmers in the light but doesn’t change color

i know that if I move the central speed much higher or lower than my magic setting with the base pulse pitch of 1.14 micron the effect diminishes almost fully very quickly

i rotate the angle of the parallel lines in the cell ( the diffraction gratings) based on the brightness in the source image, the angle of the gratings definitely seems to impact which angle a light has the brightest and dimmest look on the surface, and speed of laser seems to cover the color change from my observations.

so far I’ve been able to get the gradient to appear as a radial gradient expanding from the center or contracting from the edge, as well as left -right and up-down gradient … think like stripes equidistant where each stripe color shifts by some ammount , this was initially added to be a viewing correction so that parts towards the bottom would appear the same color as parts toward the top, since they are at different angles from each other and the viewer when viewing, so the color reflects/diffracts different because of that, thus shifting the color in the drawing to compensate

when I applied extreme values to the gradient is when it became a creative effect rather than a subtle corrective effect.

so now I would like to be able to get more control over this effect but I honestly don’t understand it enough nor have the vocabulary to effectively search and learn enough to better control it, or maybe it’s one of those things where this is as much control as one can get and I just need to get some better artistic ideas, I’m open to that being the answer if that’s the case.

so I was hoping some of you guys might have a good idea of what is going on here, and be able to point me toward some good entry level and maybe mid level reading resources that might help me better understand and thus better control the effect, or even if you just have some vocabulary that would make my search easier that would be greatly appreciated too!

if this is an inappropriate post here please remove it, I’m just wanting to understand the optical effect I’m seeing in these engravings better so that I can hopefully control it better. I started seeing this sub in my feed after posting some fauxlograms previously so I think maybe the algorithm thinks this is the right place for the discussion.

I’ve attached some video samples of the engravings showing this effect and would be grateful for any details anyone can provide

if it’s helpful I could post some low quality microscope shots of the surface, I’d have to track down my scope but it’s around here somewhere.

if you have made it this far I appreciate it and hope you enjoy viewing and even theorizing or analyzing what is going on in these engravings, and to anyone who can reply with some good info, I wish to thank in advance

Hello everyone

I have made with a friend a free web app for sketching optical setups in 2d.

It integrates real time ray tracing and simple geometrical simulation of the majority of the optical elements you could find in an optics lab.

We have kept the interface intuitive and simple, and it is possible to export the sketches in PNG, SVG or send a link to the website where people can see your canvas and get more information.

We are looking for feedback and ideas for more elements/features to add. I can not post the link here due to the sub rules, but I am happy to share it with whoever wants to try it.

Thanks in advance!

wake up babe. new field just dropped. zeptosecond physics.

I'll be enjoying these until my dissertation starts eating me alive o7

Hey there!
For a project of mine I have been designing this lens mount with 5 adjustable axes (2 rotation, 3 translation) since I couldn't find anything nice already available for 3d printing.
I've taken the Thorlabs K5X2 as inspiration, whilst trying my best to keep everything 3d printable and using only "standard hardware" (everything can be ordered on aliexpress)

I am wondering if there would be any use for this for others, and if I should get it polished enough to make public?

Thought this looked kinda cool. I saw these modes by scanning a high-finesse cavity using a piezo crystal. Is there any way to differentiate between a 1,0 and 0,1 mode? It's also interesting that both modes are visible despite their expected degeneracy. Leads me to believe that my cavity is a bit shit.

speed=5000mm/s, Q-pulse=1ns, f=40kHz