I will update the post with a current layout.
To your questions: 1) the lenses are high quality and do not have any marks/burns on their faces. 2) Any dust is swept first with a blower tool and then the optic is cleaned with a methanol/acetone solution and lens cleaning tissues. 3) The 1064nm...
We are currently operating at a lower energy to work on alignment. We are also enabling and disabling the amplifier flashlamp to ensure that the beam isn't clipping in the head while we proceed adjusting the other optics.
I am working with a Nd:YAG pulsed laser system produced by Continuum back in the early 2000s called the Precision II 8000. We just received the laser from another department at the University and have been setting it up to work unseeded at 532nm.
The previous lab team had adjusted the output...