612nm returns!.....for a price

It appears that Newport is acquired a new source of 612nm helium neon lasers.

I wonder where they're sourcing them from...probably REO by the look of it. The only have the large 2 mW model variations for about 2 grand. Looks like I have some emails to send!

Re: 612nm returns! - for a price!

Wow, that's unexpected. Wonder what the application is that caused a solid demand for it.

Btw, at first I thought the thread title meant you resurrected your fallen 612.

Re: 612nm returns! - for a price!

Sigurthr said:

Wow, that's unexpected. Wonder what the application is that caused a solid demand for it.

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Same here.

Sigurthr said:

Btw, at first I thought the thread title meant you resurrected your fallen 612.

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Me too, that's why i added the second part to the title.

I wish...but I am seeking alternatives with Sam. Also I found that my small orange is a multi line I caught it spitting orange and a teeny bit of red once in a while last night. Truly must of been a new tube...the power has climbed just a tiny bit.

What exactly was the total damage on that fallen hene, btw? Maybe salvage the mirrors and grab a brewster? I suppose if the mirrors were the damage then there's not much you could do.

The only application I can think of is maybe raman spectroscopy for graphene research. AFAIK they tend to use a green and a red laser, and they choose which gives the better results, but an intermediate wavelength might work better for some applications.

The OC is destroyed but the HR I'm salvaging. I also have a pair of Orange broadband mirrors from REO.

An early Orange was used for high contrast/ high visibility laser sights in systems, without sacrificing sensor sensitivity since it was still so close to red versus yellow or green. But that's about it. I suspect they found something that they can fluoresce with it maybe?

Wow, never thought I'd see this happen.

Sam is about the only source i've seen on these until now. I know he has a stash (still has at least one more pushing 4.6 mw, multiline)

Even then they aren't cheap - but less than $2000.

Keep us updated. Any new ones mean at some point there will be more used ones. That is always good.

I know I didn't think that this was going to happen anytime soon either! Still little likely be a while before we see them surplus market though. I was talking to Sam about his last one he's not sure if he's willing to sell it, but he already promised me the first right of refusal if he decides to do so. I'm saving up my money now in a couple of weeks I should have enough to pay for it. I need a new one for a fun intracavity experiment.

ultimatekaiser said:

It appears that Newport is acquired a new source of 612nm helium neon lasers.

I wonder where they're sourcing them from...probably REO by the look of it. The only have the large 2 mW model variations for about 2 grand. Looks like I have some emails to send!

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They never really left. A company in Southeast Asia has been producing them for the past 10-15 years.

Other companies will produce them, just not stock them for small sales. Quantity orders happen once in a while.

They go into biotech/diagnostics and wavelength standards all the time.

Kaiser,

I don't want the aforesaid company flooded with emails from people who won't pay full price, wanting a tube for 35$, so I sent you a PM.

Most Companies, including my former laser company, consider unfulfilled sales calls very annoying. It leads to product data becoming "On Request". This is because the sales ladies/gentlemen do not have the enthusiasm we do. They go home at the end of the day to anything BUT technology for the most part. They don't like their time wasted. That's also why single unit sales get priced at 2x commercial sales or more. It costs money to have some one answer the phone and make quotes, and the salesman's commission is often tied to the ratio of quotes/inquires to successful sales.

Also considered annoying is asking for duds or off spec parts. No one, for the most part, allows off spec parts to leave the plant. That blows your ISO 9000 or whatever statistics out of the water. Big clients usually ask for statistics on ALL parts sold by a supplier. Therefore off spec parts don't exist, they never make it off the line.


Hence it is a better idea to do a group buy then ask for one unit. That group buy has to have a sole point of contact with the company, and the check for the buy had best be ready quickly.

I'm mentioning this for a reason


Steve

Oh I know totally but that's hard to work up around here sometimes. I'm not afraid to pay full price, but few others here are that hardcore. I've actually run into said company before but never emailed them when on my initial search due to othr cheaper sources in-country. But I have considered a group buy a few times.

Interest is high, but lots of pockets here aren't that deep usually. REO I can talk to readily, as I live right by them, which is part of why I'm more excited over this it's nice to see stock in the states again in single order format.

I know he told me he wouldn't sell both. He offered me either one, I chose the less expensive one.

But I'm sure if the price is right, he would think a little harder on it. But, you'll might end up being closer to 4 digits than I'm comfortable with for a used 612.

4.6mw is a lot of 612. Plus multiline.

ultimatekaiser said:

I know I didn't think that this was going to happen anytime soon either! Still little likely be a while before we see them surplus market though. I was talking to Sam about his last one he's not sure if he's willing to sell it, but he already promised me the first right of refusal if he decides to do so. I'm saving up my money now in a couple of weeks I should have enough to pay for it. I need a new one for a fun intracavity experiment.

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Very true. And don't get me started on the 1523 infrared Tubes...they're 600-800 minimum surplus... The last 3.36um I saw was 2 grand.

If I have to pay 2k, I would rather buy a tunable HeNe which has both orange lines (612 and 604).

For how much can you get a HeNe tube with Brewster's windows but without any mirrors attached to it??

Because to me it seems you are basically paying ~2k for just the end mirrors. I wonder if it is practical to build one? :thinking:

If one knows the physics of the dielectric coating on the mirrors, in principal it should be possible to make one diy. Say you want certain reflectivity at normal incidence at a certain wavelength. You can calculate from the relevant matrices how many quarter-wave layers (periodically high and low index materials) gives you that. I don't know, perhaps for the HR you can add an additional layer than the OC.

This way you can access all different lines using external mirrors.

Roam said:

If I have to pay 2k, I would rather buy a tunable HeNe which has both orange lines (612 and 604).

For how much can you get a HeNe tube with Brewster's windows but without any mirrors attached to it??

Because to me it seems you are basically paying ~2k for just the end mirrors. I wonder if it is practical to build one? :thinking:

If one knows the physics of the dielectric coating on the mirrors, in principal it should be possible to make one diy. Say you want certain reflectivity at normal incidence at a certain wavelength. You can calculate from the relevant matrices how many quarter-wave layers (periodically high and low index materials) gives you that. I don't know, perhaps for the HR you can add an additional layer than the OC.

This way you can access all different lines using external mirrors.

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Actually orange has a different gas fill too.

As for brewsters and tunables.... They're far rarer and more expensive than 2k the last tunable I saw was a lot more, and they're -very- fragile. And only do fractions of what a dedicated tube can do.

Most brewsters are made to do red., though with the correct mirrors you can sometimes get just a bit of some other colors sometimes, but it varies with the tube, so you shouldn't count on being able to do that though. (And I'd challenge you to find orange only mirrors... I have some, but they're off a tube that was broken prior.)

I had no idea mirrorless tubes were so expensive. But why do they have different gas fills??

I know orange mirrors are rare. I haven't looked into it to see if it's doable... but in principal if you deposit thin film wave plates onto each other you get a profile of reflectance vs wavelength, you can change the height (reflectivity peak) and width (I think that's how you make multi-line lasers) of the graph by tinkering with refractive index of the layers. You can put smaller plates on top of it to even eliminate the bumps on the wing of the profile.

Melles Griot makes these multilayer mirrors. Maybe they have one for 612 nm. They should be less expensive than actual laser mirrors but probably they won't be able to tolerate the discharge environment inside the tube and must be used externally.

P.S. Oops you're right tunables are much more expensive.

It just comes down to supply and demand. Honestly, the tube is cheaper for what goes into it as there are two less dielectric mirrors.

Though they are made specially. They are made in much smaller batches, some are made-to-order. Rather than the mass produced 632.8nm HeNes.

Also, the aforementioned 632.8nm HeNes are still man hundreds, to thousands new. They just show up a lot on eBay as surplus or used.

If someone has a tunable, they know what it is. You don't just find a tunable laser at a flea market. It was specially bought, and will be sold to make even. Or close.

Honestly, there is nothing outlandishly special. The tunables have an OC permanently attached, and a brewster window on the other side.

External to the mirror is a littrow prism. This is an optic that functions as a prism by diffracting the light, and also as the HR. So turning this prism allows you to carefully select one line by allowing one line only to resonate.

Same function as the prism+HR pair found in ions, just merged and optically fused into one optic. It also has different angles, etc. They are very hard to find outside of these tunable HeNes, as well as expensive.

That's how dye lasers work too, they have the same kind of wavelength-selecting diffraction grating reflector.

The tuning is just done by rotating the grating. HR is totally replaced by the grating to make the beam travel exactly along the same direction of incidence.

I think ti:sapphire uses a similar tuning method. In fact I might use one for a nonlinear microscope I'm working on. It's tunable over what one might consider 'boring' wavelengths. But you can get to the shortest pulses, so short that Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into effect.