Trevor
0
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2009
- Messages
- 4,386
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Hmm, where to start. So, yesterday I got home from DC to find two packages waiting for me - one was optics from Surplus Shed and the other was a huge box containing a green HeNe + PSU and a 10mW Hughes HeNe head (by the way, any ideas for a power supply?).
I opened it eagerly and fire the green up. It lased happily. I plugged the red into the power supply to see if it would fire - it did, but the PSU made an unhappy buzzing (hence the PSU question) so I turned it off.
I then noticed that the front part of the housing on the green was slightly rotated, so I carefully rotated it so the label would line up correctly (and ostensibly the guts of the laser would line up too), and I heard a pop. My stomach did a flip.
I then slid the front of the housing off - it came off without any resistance. Inside I found a doughnut assembly (the beam exits through the hole) that contains the ballast resistors. Two ground wires lead to it, and a blue wire comes off of it (I could tell this one was attached to the head).
This confused me, because if I remember correctly, we quite often just wire ballast resistors in series with the head. These seem like they're wired strangely. On closer examination, I found where the two black wires (I'm assuming / hoping they're grounds) were attached, and I think I've figured out the original orientation.
My question is - if I reattach the ballast resistors with the positions of the black wires (ground?) reversed, will I kill the tube (or PSU)? The green HeNe head was built by Siemens.
-Trevor
I opened it eagerly and fire the green up. It lased happily. I plugged the red into the power supply to see if it would fire - it did, but the PSU made an unhappy buzzing (hence the PSU question) so I turned it off.
I then noticed that the front part of the housing on the green was slightly rotated, so I carefully rotated it so the label would line up correctly (and ostensibly the guts of the laser would line up too), and I heard a pop. My stomach did a flip.
I then slid the front of the housing off - it came off without any resistance. Inside I found a doughnut assembly (the beam exits through the hole) that contains the ballast resistors. Two ground wires lead to it, and a blue wire comes off of it (I could tell this one was attached to the head).
This confused me, because if I remember correctly, we quite often just wire ballast resistors in series with the head. These seem like they're wired strangely. On closer examination, I found where the two black wires (I'm assuming / hoping they're grounds) were attached, and I think I've figured out the original orientation.
My question is - if I reattach the ballast resistors with the positions of the black wires (ground?) reversed, will I kill the tube (or PSU)? The green HeNe head was built by Siemens.
-Trevor