Greetings, Salutations and Felicitations!

Hello -

So, I'm not good at these introduction things. I'm bofhemeritus, and I'm an alco... oh, wait - wrong group of people. :eg:

I actually had a few laser physics classes when I made my way through the giant meatgrinder of college. I actually have a degree in Electrical Engineering, which means absolutely nothing - the knowledge is nearly 20 years old now and mostly I remember how to solder well and how to read/modify schematics (very sad, I know).

I've been in IT/development for years, and I'm afraid that my EE knowledge has severely stagnated, although I am still pretty good with a soldering iron.

My first experience with lasers was in MIT's Lincoln Lab, on a gigantor, water-cooled glass-tube laser, that if I remember properly was CO2. Of course, I was in awe of it - and I've been hooked ever since.

So, here's me saying "Hello, world!" from Atlanta, GA. I'm looking forward to being a quasi-productive member, making my own lasers and doing my best to help advocate laser safety.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Hey :wave: Welcome to LPF, there is a plenty of practical knowledge to gain here, It is fun and enjoyable stuff that we all do here so you'll see that your soldering skills will be very useful now :beer: have fun and Welcome !

Welcome to the forum!!! I am currently pursuing electrical engineering, although college is a challenge for me I am very interested and curious about that field.

Welcome hopefully you will learn a ton, but only through reading, trial & error... oh and more reading.

We just came out of a phase of bottle feeding, while I can't say that that's going to be you
you can defiantly feel where I'm going with this eh.:beer::beer:

Thanks for all of the fine words of welcome! I'm more than certain it'll be a perpetual learning experience and that's fine with me. I love to learn!

I picked up one of norbyx's lasers from his thread yesterday and asked him about batteries - ended up reading through the reviews on here quasi-carefully and finally chose AW 16340s, as they seem to have a good reputation. I also did a bit of research (again, here!) and picked up a few sets of Eagle Pair 190-540nms.

It's nice to have a great resource like LPF that you can rely on - thanks for that!

Welcome to the the forum . i know what you mean by 20 years out of date i work as an electronic s technican at a university and a lot of the time I'm doing what you say you still do well solder and read modify schematics for laboratory research to make new test circuits for student projects
have a good read enjoy cheers from down under