Argon Questions?

GooeyGus said:

Swapping from single line to multiline optics should give you more than 5mW

It really just depends on how the tube was treated. Mine has a hair over 3500 hours which is getting a bit "older" but cranks out more power than tubes with half the hours. Argons take a ton of power but they can make a ton of power. Seeing 5W coming out of a huge glass tube and then being split by a prism will give you a nice fuzzy feeling inside.

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Only brighter  

Peace,
dave

GooeyGus said:

Swapping from single line to multiline optics should give you more than 5mW

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I said it might give him a 5mW improvement.

Nice pic Dave, but mine is better

Event Horizon said:

http://img13.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p1030221.jpg

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I love how you have that HV alden connector right in the sink ;D

Oh you'd get quite a bit more than a 5mW improvement. As it is, the light of the other lines is being emitted by the bore, but not selected for lasing. You should easily get double or triple the power.

But most the the gain of the system is being used on the existing line. I'm pretty sure that adding more lines would reduce the power on the existing lines and the total improvement wouldn't be very high.

I haven't received this argon yet but the seller says that the manufacture plate on it rates it at 1/4w and he says he has never tested it BUT that the tube has less than 5 hours on it-----so we will see

Do yall think that this will be bright enough to use with a 20k scanner?-I don't really know what to expect from an argon.

KGB_Productions said:

I haven't received this argon yet but the seller says that the manufacture plate on it rates it at 1/4w and he says he has never tested it BUT that the tube has less than 5 hours on it-----so we will see

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I'm sure that the "plate" says <250mW (<1/4Watt: <.25 Watt). ALL of my JDSU lasers have <.50 Watt printed on them, even the SL10 (Single line -- 488nm -- 10mW). The only "laser specific" number comes from the second part of the model number for the laser head. Do you have the model number yet?

Peace,
dave

Event Horizon said:

Argon lasers are hideously inefficient due to the quantum mechanical nature of the argon atoms you can expect an efficiency of about 0.01%.

from a regular 120 volt socket you can get at the most 120V x 15A = 1800 Watts.
0.01% of that is 180mW. If you factor in the losses in the heated cathode, fans, passbank and other circuitry, you would be lucky to get 80mW out of one of these.

Those small cylindrical argon tubes typically are rated at 20-40mW and you will probably get closer to 15-20mW except when its new i would expect. If you swap out the optics for multiline optics, assuming the optics are external, you might be able to get 5mW more then before in total but aligning optics is no walk in the park without an optical bench and some experience. But that AO modulator is a great find, if it works it's easily worth what you paid for the whole package.

Just for god sakes don't run that thing without the blower on it.

The sticker on mine says 400mW maximum but i never get more then 45mW out at maximum power. They make it higher then it really is because when it's brand new the optical gain is huge and you get a ton more power then you are supposed to.

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An Air cooled JDSU head won't even do 0.01% efficiency They usually come in at around 0.0029-0.0032% efficiency, bigger argons such as the Lexel 88 usually do around 0.04%, then even bigger ones will do 0.06-0.07%

Argon lasers are fun

Argon is a bit 'special' because the gain of the other lines dont *fight* for strength as much as other lasers. The green line is almost as strong as the 488 line, so right there you're almost doubling your power. You will see the exact same tube (this is in bigger tubes, but it applies for all) rated at like 2W single line (blue or green) but 5W multiline. This is why when labs need a specific wavelength application, especially with bigger argons, they don't get a single line tube. They just use a filter to get the line they need because an argon with green-only mirrors will make about the same amount of power as a multiline argon with a green-only filter. This is why you dont really see many big argons with single line optics, because they aren't necessary unless the application is very very very picky about one wavelength.

Thanks for clearing that up GG. I had forgotten that point. I double checked my textbook and indeed each laser line has its own upper lasing level so they can all lase without interfering each other. BUT, at higher currents the green line is actually more powerful than the 488 line. It needs higher current to start lasing, but it's gain increases with current faster than the gain of the 488 does so eventually it surpasses it and becomes the dominant line.  

I did just such an experiment at school with a Coherent Innova 90 argon putting out 500 mW. Accidentally set the target paper on fire too, gotta be more careful next time!  ;D

That laser was particularly interesting actually, the HR mirror was mounted to a wavelength selector which was actually a prism inside the cavity, so you could selectively choose which color could lase or slide it out and get all of them at once.

My HGM outputs 5W at 34A with a tube voltage of around 185V. That's .079%! My Spectra physics single line outputs only 50mW at 10A with a tube voltage of around 90V which is only .0055% (ignoring PSU and cathode losses). Two reasons are the multiline feature of the larger head, and the greater current.

Got it today....Uniphase Model # 2202-35LL

Should I worry about turning this up all the way if i don't want to blow power or is that not even a concern?


Any info on this would be GREATLY APPRECIATED

are you sure it's just -35LL?? it should have a different series of letters there. Either SL for 488nm, GL for 514.5nm, VL for 457nm or ML for multiline.

Also, I've never seen '35' as a power designation. Are you sure it doesn't say -30SL? or even -3SL (although I dont know if 3mW was one of the units made either...)

Tube life has an inverse correlation with tube current. More power = less life. But honestly, for what you're using it for it really wont make a noticeable difference. Just dont let it overheat often. It will shut itself off when it reaches a certain temp, if it keeps doing this, turn it down a bit.

ya I just checked it again 2202-35LL  Its a very old tube..1988  

power supply model #2102-3SLL

Cyonics division did make a 2202-3SLL  (3mW; 488nm).  I have never heard of a 2202-35LL.

The number 2202 tells you the model and configuration (cylindrical)  After the hyphen there is a number that corresponds to the mW output it is rated for.  Then it will have SL (single line-488nm), GL (green line), BL (blue line), VL (Violet line), or ML (multi-line).  Any letters after the first two (SL, etc.) give information about the original installation of the laser.  There is no "LL" designation.

Having it mated to a 2102-3SLL PSU is further support for the "SLL" designator

It may look like a "5", but I'll bet it's an "S".

Peace,
dave

Cyparagon said:

shrecken licht has a ~130mW single line at 115V, doesn't she?

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I think I need to change my sig - honestly I don't have a clue as to what that laser is doing, power-wise. It was my 2nd argon, and I got it off Ebay. The seller didn't appear to really know much about lasers and the only thing on the laser itself was the nameplate that said 150mw and a piece of paper taped to the laser head that said 131mw. Of course, I know now that you can't believe a thing most Ebay sellers say about laser power ratings, especially sellers that don't deal in lasers.

But this laser did appear to be a good bit brighter than my first argon which had 50mw on the nameplate, so I thought that it was possible that it could be close to what was claimed. But being that I have acquired some other argon lasers, including two from reputable sellers (one seller is a respected board member here), I can't imagine that laser is doing more than about 75mw, if that.


One of these days I'm going to get a meter and find out once and for all.

But as for shutting down and blowing circuit breakers, that can certainly happen. One of my argons shut down when I had it cranked up to around 10 amps - at that level it only ran for a couple minutes or less. However, the alleged 131mw SL argon actually broke one of my circuit breakers - I had to replace it. I had the laser running for a couple minutes and everything went dark. And then I didn't have any lights in my garage until I got the breaker replaced.

But of course I told my mother that I had an electric space heater running - to this day she doesn't know that it was my argon that killed that breaker! ;D

But our house is getting old so I think any thing that would draw a lot of power could have broken the breaker. Needless to say it hasn't happened again since then.