Bens new argon laser

WOW! I Finally have one again. Thanks to timelablasers, I am once again the proud owner of an ArIon lasers.

Its the day it arrives. On my way home from staying at a friends (5:30 am so not to miss mr courier) I slip between the train and the platform. Big mistake. 3 hours later and out of the ER and X-rays done I get a little reminer that I am not the T1000

Nursing my injuries and learning to type with one hand, I heard my name being called from the front door.
"can you sign here?" I said "are you serious?!" took the box and GENTLY pushed it with my foot into the middle of my loungeroom. I wasnt game to lift it. My shoulder hurts like HELL now. I'm not going to give argon laser lifting a try...
(image removed - it shows my address!)
Removing 6 trees worth of news paper, this is revealed...

A fan? hehehhe a big noisy fan!

awww isnt it a cute "little" laser
heres a shot of its ass end....

and it posing with the goggles...


of course the obliatory beam shot!


Its a nice little laser. Wont run if the interlock plug or key is off (wont even power up) and even handles cool down for you - just turn off the key, the laser goes off and the fans run until its at "shutoff" tempurature - not completly cold, but that warmish temp that you should shut an ion laser off at.

Guys I'd love to play with my new laser a bit more, but I am in incredible amounts of pain at the moment (thank GOD that train didnt move!) and I need to go into sleep mode and recover. I will post more images later of my argon.

Thanks timelablasers. made an otherwise miserable day a happy one!

whats the output of that thing??

EDIT: I saw the bottom of your post. Its a 50mW+. Nice.

Congrats!

Nice laser.

thanks guys - looks around 80 ish milliwatts. Very impressed. Fella's, if i dont reply here for a while its coz I am taking it easy and recovering (read doped up on pain killers).

I'll be back in action again soon.

Cheers
Ben

Ben -- Does yours require preheat from the stove heating element? I know that in cold weather they need to be warmed up !!!!!!

HMike

Good One HMike --you beat me to it. At least his injuries are not so bad that he must put that new Argon on the back burner for now!!! Hak....{...

Back Burner ?? :crackup: Gotta love that !

Because of this post, I ran my ArIon for an hour tonight. Maintenance burn. Others should do the same.

HMike

oh pi$$ off you lot, I'm just keeping the tube at the optimal temperature.

Yer a ceeky lot eh *smirk*

Cheers
Ben

edit: When I walked back in the door from going to a mates to deliver a flash drive, I felt the pain of my injuries go away when I saw that baby sitting on the cooktop waiting for me to fire it up.

So I reached out with the key in my right hand. Key ended up on floor, I yelped like a wounded puppy, and decided to sit down, crack open a johnnie and cola, and write this

I had to make a rule on myself to NEVER put anything that I did not want to heat EVER on my stove burners!! Thought i was heating up an iron skillet when it was actually a plastic bowl-- awful stink and smoke alarm too. I even put 'F' and 'R' stickers near the control knobs but sometimes that is not enough especially at 4:20 o'clock. he he---Hak sez---gotta love those Argons!!!(but I gotta sell at least one SL and one ML soon, that would leave me with 4)

Sweet laser! Power supply and laser tube all in one nice package

Nice laser - there was one of these on eBay the other day - I'll post a link when I dig it out.

Welcome to the ion crew!:eg::eg:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Laser-Physics-4...mQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_15?hash=item3efb4bd45c

*Shameless plug* I have a JDSU 2211-20SLE argon system for sale - £100 - Does 52mW 488nm full tilt - a bit over 30mW at it's rated current - meets rated power at 6.3A IIRC - 1.7A bellow it's rated current. had a new tube installed before i purchased it as far as I can tell.

I think that is the same seller that vk2fro got his from --very nice argon and so much smaller and lighter too.-hak

yes these lasers are easy to lift. I took the unit over to a friends place and showed them. First comment was "wow noisy fans" then his missus gave a comment about the colour.

Then we tripped out the breaker - aircon was on same circuit LOL!

Hi Ben,
Nice pics! Good to see you're getting some proper laser therapy for your injuries.
This is the only argon laser I know of that you can throw in a backpack and take it with you.
Enjoy!
Rob.

lol or for that matter carry under one arm if the other arm is incapacitated.

I am mending up ok. Tonight I might get the hex drivers out and take a few photos of what it looks like inside, along with reverse engineering the remote connector so us owners of this model can make up a remote control box for it with metering...

So I had to take a peek inside my new toy.

Heres one side of the laser. Note the filament lines at the right, and the massive tube plenum that basically makes the big noisy fan (TM) push all the air out the back of the laser from the front of the tube.



In this photograph we can see the main power supply capacitors for the switching power supply. If this were a linear the capacitors would be MUCH larger, not to mention there'd be a large power transformer, almost doubling the weight of the laser



I'd hate to build one of these. They have shoved everything into a shoebox sized case, and done a damn good job at it!

I'll reverse engineer the remote connector later. My shoulder started to hurt again so I popped the top back on and secured the screws. You need a 5/64th hex driver to open up the laser. The fan cord is pretty short, and connects near the power supply caps, should you open yours and it pops off; leaving you wondering where the F it goes

Edit: I found some nicely labelled connectors:

Force Idle (obviously for an idle/run switch)
Current Pot
Light pot (where the light pot is connected)
Tube Current/Voltage (I guess for current monitoring)

If these map out to the interlock remote connector, it is just a matter of finding the one that sets the mode (light current) and determining what the output on the V/I pins relates to in order to wire up a panel meter for V/I monitoring.