This one's for you, Dave. *Now with pictures*

pseudonyms said:

I wish I had an argon  :'(

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Argons are easy. They only take money.

This is helium/cadmium . . . . .

And it is beautiful.

I can't wait. Kevin answered my email

Nicely done!

Peace,
dave

after adjusting the HR mirror I'm getting some more power. This laser should do about 40mW, with powers as high as 80mW. Well, if I hold my hand reaaaallly still I can feel the tingle now! So that's good.... maybe around 30mW or so. ALso, I know it still needs a good bit of running before it will make full power. They say to run it for 24 hours for every couple months that it has been in storage. Well, it sat on my floor for at least two months, and it had a little bit of a hard-start this morning, so hopefully over the next week or so the power will come up. I'm only going to turn it off when I go to sleep.

Oh yeah, since I didn't mention it in the beginning of the post, Dave is right this is a Helium Cadmium laser.

It uses helium as the gas medium for the lasing material to suspend in. The lasing material is Cadmium (toxic heavy metal) and it is heated and heated until it vaporizes and the vapor goes into the bore of the tube and then some magic happens and you get a BEAUTIFUL 442nm beam. I wish everyone could see it... the divergence is simply amazing, the beam quality is superb, and its polarized. These lasers are PERFECT for holography because they have such a long coherence length, great polarization, and such good beam specs

Very nice, GooeyGus, as usual.

Cute how you have another argon lying around on your bed in the background.

Awesome, man! What's that system rated for in terms of output?

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

If only I could afford one. :'(

Event Horizon said:

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

If only I could afford one.  :'(

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You just have to keep saving . . . .

You never know when a deal will pop up

Peace,
dave

I'm so pissed right now.

When I started the PSU this morning, one side fired and the other side didn't.... right when I started to get worried the other side fired up. It ran for about 3 or 4 hours and I thought nothing of it... it just delayed for whatever reason. Well, I went into the kitchen to get some food and the laser wasn't on anymore. Shit. I thought the power might have flickered because we are having a bit of a wind storm, but the PSU is on a surge protector so if it did, it wouldn't have messed anything up. I turned it off and tried to re-start it. One side of the PSU is dead. Just like last time, but it's the opposite side. I'm so sick of this.... I think I'm not meant to have a nice HeCd laser for more than a couple days.

Now you might be thinking "well... two PSUs have had this happen now, maybe it's your head"

There is nothing in the head that has anything to do with the HV modules. All they do is light the tube, the control circuits are totally separate and they are just low voltage DC. You can completely disconnect all the control circuits and the tube will still light, so it cant be anything in my head. I just have really really really bad luck.

Ughh....

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times . . . . .


You need to get yourself an army of frogs.


Gas lasers will NOT operate correctly or reliably without frog juice

You are still holding your tongue in the left corner of your mouth, right?

RMA?

Peace,
dave

I'm trying to get a hold of the dude who sold it to me... hoping that he'll be a decent enough guy to let me send it back.

The thing is, I have a good idea of what needs to be fixed on the supply... it's either A) the two power transistors that control that HV module   or B) the PWM card that drives the HV driver card.

I have plenty of spare parts in my other PSU, the problem is that I dont know if the transistors are good in the other PSU. They could have been the reason that the other one failed as well. I know the HV module itself is ok, because the driver card for the HV unit isn't getting any power at all. If the HV unit were bad, the driver card would have power but nothing would work.

Ughh....  I could buy all new power transistors, but the problem is that these transistors have to be a matched set. I have two matched sets in the other PSU, but then again I dont know if they are good or not. Before I tinker with anything at all I just want to get a hold of the guy who sold it to me....

I should have just sprung the extra $250 and sent it to melles griot for full repair with 1 year warranty :-/

Live and learn I guess.... I may be selling another ~150mW 473nm module here pretty soon to get this thing patched up once and for all.

That which does not kill me . . . . . . .

daguin said:

That which does not kill me . . . . . . .

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...pisses me off and drains my wallet?

holy shit.... it just lit up again at the last second.... fingers crossed...

dont ask me why.... or how... but it's lasing again.   The PSU has a really high pitched whine to it now.... which to me says there is an issue with the PWM card. This happened the first time I started the PSU but it promtly stopped. I guess we'll see what happens.

EDIT: the whine is gone... still lasing. No idea.

Could that whine be the ignitor circuit keeping the tube on ??
Perhaps there's a temperature sensative component issue in the PS.

Mike

Hemlock Mike said:

Could that whine be the ignitor circuit keeping the tube on ??  
Perhaps there's a temperature sensative component issue in the PS.

Mike

Click to expand...

I think the whine was the PWM card running at a lower-than-normal frequency... no idea but it resolved. I guess we'll see if it works tomorrow.

if there was a temp interlock in the PSU, I would think the whole thing wouldn't work, not just one side. Who knows....

It works! Lets just cross our fingers now...