A few weeks ago, I decided to buy one of those 40W co2 tubes that are so popular around here.

I quickly changed my mind and bought a dye laser instead. (Good thing my offer on a co2 tube got declined)

Last Saturday, I got a package in the mail.



This 54lb beast of a package was my dye head and circulator.



Unfortunately, the dye circulator was covered in toxic laser dye (not a fun cleanup job).





The Laser

The dye laser I'm using is a coherent 599.



I wouldn't have guessed that my first variable Wavelength laser would be class IV
(you need a substantial pump source to obtain an output of >500mW)



Here is the dye head with the cover off, I am shining my 90mW green through it. (no dye)



The birefringent filter, the magic optic that allows the output to be tuned.



A size comparison with my argon.

The Dye

The dye I will be using is Rhodamine 6g



The dye allows for a tuning range from yellow (maybe green?) to red.



I am still in the process of gathering all the materials.
I will update this thread as my project progresses and will hopefully get some high power tunable yellow beamshots soon.

Is this a unit with a high speed dye jet? Or is it a pulsed operation?

Hence... Class IV

I can't wait to see it fired up!

High speed dye jet, it has been tested up to 32W pump power (8.5W output at 600nm iirc)

What is the pump source?

With a 32W input could you also get multi-watt output it the yellow range?

give me a 32W argon and i'll let you know

Can't wait for video! Seriously, this thing sounds awesome. (Aside from the dye cleanup)

That's just insane! Can't wait to see some beam shots.

Pretty sure that was glycol you were seeing not dye, hopefully food grade.
Its used as anti freeze etc. same as anti freeze without the oil for the water pump.
Make sure you dont run it empty , it may have some bearing on the cooling.

Highpower yellow laser mmm.....
I WANT IT
Can't wait for some beamshots !

Jim

How will you pump it? What was the cost?

You are partially right, what you are seeing is ethylene glycol (reagent grade)
However, it is also mixed with dye dissolved in reagent grade methanol.

I'll be using a dpss pump source.

As for the price, I'll wait until i'm done spending money before I post the price.

So the pump wavelength needs to be around 480nm?

I wonder if you could get away with a 445nm diode?

^ if you could I think you'd need an array of them.

The peak absorption wavelength for Rhodamine 6g is around 530nm.

The 514nm line is the one that does all the work, 445nm goes straight through.



I split the lines of my argon to show how each line is absorbed. (514nm at the top, 454nm at the bottom)

The pump beam also needs to be focused down to a very small point, something those 445nm diodes just can't do.

Ahh, so you are going to use 532nm dpss.

I googled Rhodamine 6g and I seen specral graphs when excited with 480nm light, so I assumed that you meant the 488 argon line and 473 dpss.

Cool!

That's quite a big project you're starting, but definately interesting! What kind of pump laser do you have? You'll probably need a few watts to get above threshold. Does this laser use a dye jet or a cuvette?

Be careful with the dyes and their solutions, they can be quite toxic. Probably the main reason why I don't plan to get my dye laser running.

Why do they use an argon to pump it at 514 and not a frequency doubled dpss?

Also, pics show a cuvette, right?

I will be using a 0.5W DPSS, not ideal but it will do for now (it's all i can afford). I will likely end up selling it and getting a higher power.

methanol - http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927227

ethylene glycol - http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927167

rhodamine 6g - http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927579

yeah, all around nasty stuff.



This laser is 22 years old, DPSS was significantly less feasible then.

A quick update:

I got my pump laser last Friday.



It's a 750mW, however the beam isn't perfect. The coherent rep i talked to said i could expect ~5% efficiency which is piss poor. I will probably end up selling it and getting a laser with some better beam specs down the road.



^my labby with some of Ash's portables

Not a bad looking beam shot though. Just not tem00. Someone will take it off your hands.

Beam quality is very important, with a good beam the efficiency will be far higher. But apparently dye laser also can have with a rather low threshold:
IEEE Xplore - Sign In
If diodes can pump one a mostly TEM00 DPSS will do even better. Of course not all dye lasers are created equal.

This all looks like a lot of fun! I'v always been curious how these really worked....looking forward to a video. I'm also surprised that they are pumped by an Argon, for some reason I thought they would be pumped by a nitrogen laser.

Thanks for sharing and looking forward to more!

For CW use they can be pumped by an argon laser or a 532nm DPSS. Pulsed dye lasers can be pumped by a flashlamp, nitrogen laser, doubled or tripled YAG. Lots of choices.

Another update:

I took some power graphs

first 15 minutes:



A 10 minute graph after it had been on for some time:



After some warm up it does appear to be TEM00 though it has a parallel beam.