I got the power....!!!

Oops sorry Norb I forgot this isn't Blooms thread.

n2stuff said:

Oops sorry Norb I forgot this isn't Blooms thread.

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No problem there, as long as we are talking lasers who cares who started the thread. Go on continue, I am interested myself.
I just cleaned my mg991 and the spot seems a bit better than before but not all that much.
In any case the laser looks awesome, as any other laser. There is something magical in the laser light that makes you just look at it. To me its like watching a fire, you just stare at it for no particular reason other than the beauty of it.

I know what you are talking about. My first HeNe I built from a kit back in 1988. I would look a the spot for many minutes at a time. Next time you fire it up look at the graininess of the spot then turn your head side to side while still staring at the spot. You will see something cool.

I'll have to try that as well!

I love my HeNes. Working with them and learning how they operate more in depth is what sparked my interest in EE.

EDIT: Tried it...don't understand. :/

bloompyle said:

I'll have to try that as well!



EDIT: Tried it...don't understand. :/

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Hey bloompyle, I think he's talking about laser speckle. It's a visual artifact resulting from the random interference within a diffuse reflection. It's easiest to see when viewing a larger spot (like an expanded beam, or one at a distance from the laser), on a matte surface like cardboard, paper, or a surface painted with a flat finish paint.

BTW, I've checked out your gas laser threads, and learned quite a bit from them. Thanks.


Hey Norbyx, that's a REAL NICE HeNe you got there! That kind of power is impressive for that particular tube. If you want to see if it is going multimode, you can best see it by viewing the spot at a distance, or expanding it with a lens (much like I described above^^^ for viewing laser speckle).

I have a very old soft-sealed tube that modes like crazy, but it never occurred to me to monitor the output power while watching it. I'll try to dig it out and do that when I have time. It might be interesting.

I forgot to lase my Raman for over a month, it's a softy, and it was NOT happy.. It took a while for all the lines to come in, and they were flickering in in all sorts of TEM modes I've never even seen before. It was like watching a fire flicker and jump all over the place.

Glad you enjoyed the thread(s) and learned something