I used to order stuff from MWK back in the day, I should see if I can find the catalog I had... they had a website @ laser tube diode lasers coherent at mwkindustries.com but it seems to have expired a while back...

you can see parts of the old site on the internet archive

Welcome The World's Greatest Source for LASER Equipment!

Ok I gotta ask. What is the benefit of these gas lasers, low power, Huge Large power consumption.

It is possibly a "Because I can" sort of thing?

Nostalgia I guess. Like tube audio amplifiers vs. solid state.

It's because they're cool.

It's like any laser owned by a hobbyist . . . .

If you've got to ask "What good are they?", you will not understand anyway

Stick around awhile and learn

Not everything in life has to have a "functional" purpose

Peace,
dave

Peace,
dave

Double Peace to you too Dave!

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Peace,
dave

I think after the 445 craze we're going to have a lot of people who figure if it doesn't burn, they don't want it.

Last time I got asked "what's the point?" of my laser collection, and particularly at that time why I spent all weekend fussing with some argons and why I spent money on something that 'just made a light', it was from a guy who just got back from spending all weekend and over $300 on drinks a "bar crawl" downtown.

I told him that maybe neither of us got anything with a "point" done that weekend, but I still had my lasers, and his $300 had been converted to piss by now.

Part of my lasers' purpose is to keep me out of bars

Peace,
dave

I dont care if it burns I like the light!!

Still... it's cool to know you have the burning capability if the need be

HeNe lasers just look awesome.

Weak lasers are cool because one can play with them without fear of going blind.

Hmmm.... HeNe's sound cool but IMHO every time somebody walks into Office Depot and asks for a red laser, I have a hard time actually suggesting the shit we put on the shelves. If it was any other 5mW laser I could respect them more, but for me, a 5mW Walmart style red laser is nothing in my mind, and I could never reconcile myself to buy one. I guess I just figure for 30 bucks you could get yourself a pretty damn nice 5mW Green Pen style that would look hella better. Maybe my opinions on 5mW reds are misguided, but yall will hear most of my opinions anyway, so there they are.

PS-I am mainly referring to Khulu's post about low power being cool. I agree, but as stated above, only if it isn't those little reds.

You can not only play with them without going blind, you can run a HeNe without regard to any concept of a "duty cycle" AND it runs virtually silently.

Beautiful colors
Great beam specs without lenses
Constant on for as long as you want it to be on
Virtual silent operation

Additionally, a "collector" will want as many different types and colors of lasers as they can get. Eventually, diodes will replace all of these HeNe units and they will cease to be produced




Peace,
dave

Just wow.

Those are all HeNe lasers? How many mWs? Is that with fog or no? How much are those? They are magnificent!

They are all Helium/Neon lasers (632nm, 612nm, 594nm, 543nm). These average about 3mW. There was a visualizer in the air.

Peace,
dave

Wow.....beautiful colors there and a wonderful beam shot!
Very nice Dave.
Now I'll have to start watching for gas lasers, more reading, more money..it never ends!

The fun part with gas lasers is they'll bite you if you mistreat them. No LED'ing diodes, they bite back

That looks like 1992, not 1972. I don't think MWK was even around in 1972, and HeNe lasers were considerably more primitive at the time. I've never seen one older than about mid 80s that wasn't AC line powered.

A diode laser won't come close to the beam quality of a HeNe. If you want to do holography they're hard to beat. Also there's just something cool about gas lasers, they were the only game in town when I started playing with this stuff, the only diode lasers that existed were IR.

Thanks for sharing Dave awesome lasers and pics

It would be really easy to build one of those. 1mW barcode scanner tubes are compact and easy to find. Sam Goldwasser has a bunch of cute little Melles Griot tubes that are about 5" long and only a few dollars. 12V power bricks to run them are pretty easy to find too. Stuff it all in a section of PVC pipe with a 8x AA holder, switch and LED and you've got a HeNe pointer. If you wanna get really fancy, find someone with a lathe to turn some nice end caps that fit flush.

I actually built something very similar to this when I was a kid and HeNe was the only option there was. Now I've got a few of those really short tubes from Sam and a friend gave me a section of nice aluminum tubing so I've been toying with making a nice one.