Argon laser build!

Dave (daguin) was giving away 2 free argon lasers, because he had no use or power supply/info on them. Never having a gas laser before drove me to "buying" it from him. The laser itself was free, but the postage ran me about $100US. Shortly after paying for it, the inrush of 445nm diodes! Oh well, this will still be worthwhile!

When I received it, I knew why shipping cost so much. The box was huge! The packaging took up more of the box than the laser Because of Dave's perfect packing, the laser arrived without a scratch.

It's been sitting next to my desk for the last few weeks, until I could afford to buy 2 big toroidal transformers to make a linear PSU.

A couple of days ago, I saw timelablasers had a little laserphysics argon for sale, mentioning it was broken. I contacted him to see what was up with it, and he said the only visible problems seem to be a resistor and a MOSFET blown.

I gave him an offer, and he accepted it (Thanks once again! )

So now I have a switchmode PSU coming, that I hope to modify to run this tube. I'm soooo happy I don't have to deal with a linear PSU! So that is on it's way to me now ...

Anyway, enough babble, here are some pics:







And for those of you that know how to use stereograms:



Cheers,
Dan

150mW multiline for $100! A steal! I notice you didn't state the offer for the PSU so, not being nosey but how much is the whole bill going to be, for what you will have there?

Stereogram indeed! :crackup: Actually I know the guy who's head, or chairman, or whatever of the British Stereoscopic Society. Did you know that Brian May, (from Queen), wrote a fairly definitive book on the subject? Bit random I know, but you did kinda bring it up!

M

Do you think I could repeatedly flash both of those pictures in some sort of GIF file and wink alternating eyes to get the effect

Looking forward to how this is going to turn out. I've not messed with an argon yet because I never took the time to learn how to make a PSU. It is one of my "to do's" though!

Well, he said he had a laser with a broken PSU. He didn't really want to disassemble it, but he did, and is sending me just the PSU. He said that it's probably a blown MOSFET, and he said a resistor may be dead too, but I can have a look at it more once it arrives. I paid $100

Also, the ratings on argon lasers tend to be the absolute max, it probably won't do near that much, but we'll see.

As for the 3D image, I dunno, you could try, but you'd have to wink very fast I'd guess

Morgan, just so you know, when a Danger! sticker says 150 mW, odds are its the maximum power the physics of the device will allow, when overdriven near to destruction, multiplied by two or four as a safety margin. So a more likely figure for the laser shown, is 30 mW all lines. That changes if the words "practical limit" are on the sticker to a power closer to the physical limit.

Steve

I don't care if they come out with diodes that perform like lasers in science fiction movies: this is beautiful technology man! There's no substitute.