🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi all.

I've successfully made a linear optical encoder with a stroke of about
25cm using a flattened steel rod with a nice shiny surface, and gluing
on a laser printed transparency with a pattern of stripes. This works
find with a 1mm pattern, and a homemade detector. The detector is an
IR LED, a small lense and a Honeywell HLC2701 encoder detector
chip/opto thingy.

No worries, except it's fiddly. The lense and detector and pattern
have to be adjusted just right, and it's hard to put together.

So I got some Agilent HEDR-8100 detector chips. they have the lenses
built in and do all the hard work for you. The only problem is that
they're 150 lines per inch, which is more than I can do reliably on a
laser printer. So I'm looking for alternatives.

Does anyone know of somewhere I can get stripes like that printed
directly on the steel? Or etched?

Any thoughts on producing a clear strip with black stripes
photographically?

Or maybe a replacement reflective optical encoder detector that works
on a 1mm stripe spacing? As far as I can tell, the Agilent one is the
only device of its type.

Thanks in advance,
          Cory