Can laser diodes replace He-Ne lasers for white light reflecting holograms?

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ngkamsengpeter
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I read the tutorial on http://www.3dimagery.com/ on how to create a white light reflecting hologram but the He-Ne laser is too expensive for me . So I want to ask that can I use inexpensive laser diodes in the place of He-Ne gas lasers .

Besides that I see the websites say that the transmisson hologram can produce a virtual and real image but I don't it doesn't say white light reflecting can also produce a real image ( the image in front of the hologram plate ) . So , I want to ask that can a white light reflecting hologram produce a real image ?
 
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Hard 2 do

I never tried to make a white light reflecting hologram, but I did try making holograms the old fashioned way (split beam, target, film emulsion).

Expense wasn't the problem for me. I got a nice little helium argon laser from Edmund Scientific for around a hundred bucks, a few first surface mirrors, beam splitter, and lens, for about fifty bucks more.

The problem that messed up my efforts was VIBRATION. Even the tiniest vibrations blurred the focus of my holograms to the point where all I got were nifty 3-D looking blobs.

I finally got to the point where I tried mounting the whole set-up on a big piece of concrete my dad and I hauled home from a site where they were demolishing a bridge, and placing that on a pile of newspaper and sheets of 1/4 inch thick neoprene foam.

That improved things to the point of getting 3-D blobs more or less shaped like the chess pieces I was trying to holograph, but I never was able to produce anything worth the effort.

Later, in college, I was able to make stunning holographs, but that was in a lab where the table everything was set up on was a VERY expensive table specifically designed and built to cut vibration to near zero.

Everything you need in the way of a laser, optics, and film, can be bought here:

www.ScientificsOnline.com

The stuff needed is actually pretty cheap, but, if you're like me, and live less than a quarter mile from a major highway, I doubt you're going to have much success w/o a quarter million dollar vibration isolation rig to set it up on.