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1mW Hand-Held HeNe

aryntha

aryntha

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I think after the 445 craze we're going to have a lot of people who figure if it doesn't burn, they don't want it.

daguin said:
Not everything in life has to have a "functional" purpose :tinfoil:
Click to expand...

Last time I got asked "what's the point?" of my laser collection, and particularly at that time why I spent all weekend fussing with some argons and why I spent money on something that 'just made a light', it was from a guy who just got back from spending all weekend and over $300 on drinks a "bar crawl" downtown.

I told him that maybe neither of us got anything with a "point" done that weekend, but I still had my lasers, and his $300 had been converted to piss by now.
 





daguin

daguin

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aryntha said:
I think after the 445 craze we're going to have a lot of people who figure if it doesn't burn, they don't want it.



Last time I got asked "what's the point?" of my laser collection, and particularly at that time why I spent all weekend fussing with some argons and why I spent money on something that 'just made a light', it was from a guy who just got back from spending all weekend and over $300 on drinks a "bar crawl" downtown.

I told him that maybe neither of us got anything with a "point" done that weekend, but I still had my lasers, and his $300 had been converted to piss by now.
Click to expand...

Part of my lasers' purpose is to keep me out of bars ;)

Peace,
dave
 
K

Kulhu

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HeNe lasers just look awesome.

Weak lasers are cool because one can play with them without fear of going blind.
 
IsaacT

IsaacT

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Hmmm.... HeNe's sound cool but IMHO every time somebody walks into Office Depot and asks for a red laser, I have a hard time actually suggesting the shit we put on the shelves. If it was any other 5mW laser I could respect them more, but for me, a 5mW Walmart style red laser is nothing in my mind, and I could never reconcile myself to buy one. I guess I just figure for 30 bucks you could get yourself a pretty damn nice 5mW Green Pen style that would look hella better. Maybe my opinions on 5mW reds are misguided, but yall will hear most of my opinions anyway, so there they are. :p

PS-I am mainly referring to Khulu's post about low power being cool. I agree, but as stated above, only if it isn't those little reds.
 
daguin

daguin

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Kulhu said:
HeNe lasers just look awesome.

Weak lasers are cool because one can play with them without fear of going blind.
Click to expand...

You can not only play with them without going blind, you can run a HeNe without regard to any concept of a "duty cycle" AND it runs virtually silently.

Beautiful colors
Great beam specs without lenses
Constant on for as long as you want it to be on
Virtual silent operation

Additionally, a "collector" will want as many different types and colors of lasers as they can get. Eventually, diodes will replace all of these HeNe units and they will cease to be produced :(

henernbw1.jpg

henernbw2.jpg


Peace,
dave
 
K

Kulhu

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daguin said:
You can not only play with them without going blind, you can run a HeNe without regard to any concept of a "duty cycle" AND it runs virtually silently.

Beautiful colors
Great beam specs without lenses
Constant on for as long as you want it to be on
Virtual silent operation

Additionally, a "collector" will want as many different types and colors of lasers as they can get. Eventually, diodes will replace all of these HeNe units and they will cease to be produced :(

henernbw1.jpg

henernbw2.jpg


Peace,
dave
Click to expand...

Just wow.
 
IsaacT

IsaacT

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Those are all HeNe lasers? How many mWs? Is that with fog or no? How much are those? They are magnificent! :bowdown:
 
daguin

daguin

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wannaburnstuff said:
Those are all HeNe lasers? How many mWs? Is that with fog or no? How much are those? They are magnificent! :bowdown:
Click to expand...

They are all Helium/Neon lasers (632nm, 612nm, 594nm, 543nm). These average about 3mW. There was a visualizer in the air.

Peace,
dave
 
Vaporizer

Vaporizer

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Wow.....beautiful colors there and a wonderful beam shot!
Very nice Dave.
Now I'll have to start watching for gas lasers, more reading, more money..it never ends! :banghead:
 
T

Things

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The fun part with gas lasers is they'll bite you if you mistreat them. No LED'ing diodes, they bite back :p
 
J

james1095

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That looks like 1992, not 1972. I don't think MWK was even around in 1972, and HeNe lasers were considerably more primitive at the time. I've never seen one older than about mid 80s that wasn't AC line powered.
 
J

james1095

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Toaster said:
Ok I gotta ask. What is the benefit of these gas lasers, low power, Huge Large power consumption.

It is possibly a "Because I can" sort of thing?
Click to expand...



A diode laser won't come close to the beam quality of a HeNe. If you want to do holography they're hard to beat. Also there's just something cool about gas lasers, they were the only game in town when I started playing with this stuff, the only diode lasers that existed were IR.
 
J

james1095

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It would be really easy to build one of those. 1mW barcode scanner tubes are compact and easy to find. Sam Goldwasser has a bunch of cute little Melles Griot tubes that are about 5" long and only a few dollars. 12V power bricks to run them are pretty easy to find too. Stuff it all in a section of PVC pipe with a 8x AA holder, switch and LED and you've got a HeNe pointer. If you wanna get really fancy, find someone with a lathe to turn some nice end caps that fit flush.

I actually built something very similar to this when I was a kid and HeNe was the only option there was. Now I've got a few of those really short tubes from Sam and a friend gave me a section of nice aluminum tubing so I've been toying with making a nice one.
 
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