Ytterbium laser for $13,000.

One of the largest obstacles to two-photon DIY microscopy is the acquisition of a pulsed laser system, which generally hits the $100,000 range.

Evan Perillo, Justin McCracken, Daniel Fernée, John Goldak, Flor Medina, David Miller, Hsin-Chih Yeh, and Andrew Dunn have a 2016 paper detailing the construction and characterization of a Ytterbium laser at
 1060 nm with a usable average power of 1 W at a repetition rate of 40 MHz and a compressed pulse width of 81 fs at the sample
.

The paper comes with a component price list, which is great. The step-by-step process of building the device provided in the appendix is very curt, which is not so great.

It’s the first resource we’ve found on the important but tricky venue of DIY laser systems. This is something we at LOTC are particularly keen about repping, so if you know of any similar publications or projects please write in!

Thanks to Dr. Che-Hang Yu for pointing this resource out!