SSY 1's Recently?

[Hemlock_Mike]

John -- Sometime post a couple of your pictures here
showing your setup. Some people here might be able
to help. I suppose CO2 would only make a puddle for
your meters.
The SSY-1, as I recall, was a rangefinder light source.
Hitting it that fast likely shortened it's life.
I believe Meredith Instruments has tubes and maybe
a new Q cell. Realignment might be tricky. DrSam G
might be able to help.
HMike

 

[hwang21]

Yes Meredith Instruments sells a complete SSY-1 head for ~$200, you might have to wait for them to get their hands on a Q-switch though

 

[Hemlock_Mike]

I looked at MI and saw what little they have. John needs
the HIGH peak and SHORT pulse given by the Q switch
to make his Spectro work. Brighter the better!!
HMike

 

[Polonium210]

I have an old SSY1 YAG

Here is the output focused through a lens. The air breaks down into a plasma at the focal point.

My score of photo flash modules

Video
MVI_1236 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[Hemlock_Mike]

P210 -- How many Joules is your PS putting out ? Voltage??
The SSY- 1 is a little hotter than the copy :-(
HMike
Wish I could measure the output but it is too fast.

 

[Ulao]

Thanks for the help guys.
I will put up some pictures Mike.
I talked to Chad at MI Thursday and yes his problem is getting Q-switches.
I am suspicious of my q-switch but my immediate problem is the flash tube housing. It's been overheated. Too many shots in too short a time. I have routinely shot it 30 times in 30 seconds to get enough light for the camera and that didn't seem to be a problem, but at least one time I took 50 shots then without a cooling period 50 more shots. That's what did it. It still works and I got a new flash tube housing from MI but I have to get the q-switch out of the old one and I'm scared to push too hard for fear it might break. If anyone has experience removing q-switches without damage please advise. For now I may re-assemble it and use it the way it is. Trying to insert picture, it's asking for URL, don't know if my local reference will work.

 

[Polonium210]

Mike, My power supply is a modded photo flash circuit with about 13 Joules.
Two photo caps in series for about 660volts at 60uF triggered by a whimshurst machine

 

[Ulao]

I see the local reference to my image didn't work. Can someone explain how to reference a picture on my own pc?

 

[Polonium210]

I see the local reference to my image didn't work. Can someone explain how to reference a picture on my own pc?

Do you use a site to host your pics?

Otherwise use the paperclip beside the smiley face

 

[Ulao]

Mike in answer to your other question. I am using the standard PFN & trigger assy designed for the unit and I am pushing it to 800-850 volts. I forget what the cap size is on the PFN.
With regard to dinasaurs. Can you imagine what happened when my boss heard that I had bought a computer in 1977 but not from IBM? Of course IBM didn't start making PCs till several years later.

 

[Ulao]

Thanks I'll try it.

 

[Ulao]

Polonium210. Like that nickname. Must be because of a warm personality.

 

[The Lightning Stalker]

Mike, My power supply is a modded photo flash circuit with about 13 Joules.
Two photo caps in series for about 660volts at 60uF triggered by a whimshurst machine

So it's six and a half joules then? :wave:

 

[Ulao]

P210 -- How many Joules is your PS putting out ? Voltage??
The SSY- 1 is a little hotter than the copy :-(
HMike
Wish I could measure the output but it is too fast.

Mike here is what I did to measure power (approximately). I took a 1/4 inch carbon rod and cut off a thin slice. I carefully ground that down and polished the back side. Then with further grinding on sand paper so that it was 50+/- 1 milligrams. Then I soldered a very small thermocouple to the polished back side with less than 1 mg of super glue. I put it in the laser path just past the lens so that the beam just covered the whole disk. I could detect no carbon ablation. Then I hit it with 10 laser shots in 10 seconds (the carbon disk does not cool significantly in that time) and measured the temperature rise.
Calculating the power in millijoules is then simple.

Here are my calculations:
So we have:
Q=C M (delta T)

Where Q = quantity of heat (calories)
C = specific heat of carbon
M= mass of sensor
T = temperature

Therefore 0.170 (C) * 0.050 (M) * 3.05 (delta T) = 0.0255 calories which is converted to joules by multiplying by 4.184 = .1067 which is divided by 10 because 10 shots were made = .01067. Converted to millijoules = 10.67. Which agrees well with the literature?


Update:
I found that above 750v even the unfocused beam vaporizes some carbon from the wafer so I am going to have to either attenuate the beam or get a larger rod. What I wouldn’t give for one those old No. 6 dry cell batteries.
Gee I hope my math was correct.
The biggest problem here was the resolution of the temp scale on my multimeter. The solution is to get a tiny thermistor and measure resistance then convert to temp.

It just occurred to me I should go back and repeat this measurement. That will tell me if I've lost significant power.

 

[Sigurthr]

Depending on the timing between the pulses you'll have cooling (radiative at least) effects skewing your results but they just give you a slightly conservative reading compared to actual, which is not too much of an issue. Also there's the thermal impedances of the multiple layers, but we're just splitting graphite layers here =P .

Condition of the qswitch likely has a large effect on output power and I'm willing to bet it is why we see such variance between different members' findings.

I still want one of these, heh, it's on my bucket list along with a lot of other things I'm sure HMike would find fun, heh.

 

[Ulao]

Yes I was aware of radiative & even convective cooling (I just finished editing to mention that) and in fact I raised the temp of the disk and timed the cooling rate to get some idea of the rate. Another concern I had is what exactly is the composition of a carbon rod? Do they usually have some kind of binder in the recipe?