Laserbuilder's homebuilt ruby laser

Very interesting reading. Last night I did some research into Ruby Rod lasers. I was amazed how simple they are and the amount of power they can output. Ruby Rods can be purchased on Ebay for a moderate cost as well as the flash tubes. I read a good artcile on a home built Ruby Laser on Google. The Photo's of what it was able to do are awesome.

Sounds like an interesting laser to build. But dam it's a powerfull pulse and extreamly dangerous. Not even safe to be in the same room when firing it.

Many of the ruby rods selling on eBay are not made for use in lasers. They have impurities and the ends are not parallel even though they often ask hundreds of $$ for them. The design of the optical cavity is also not an easy thing to accomplish, and you must have a bank of HV capacitors that can be charged to a high enough potential to provide the burst of light needed to start the population inversion so lasing can begin. In other words, it's easier said than done.

Hehe, It does sound to easy. Their are some proper suppliers of rods on the net. But price goes up a lot too. Capacitor banks are not a problem. I have about 10 high voltage high uF caps sitting in my garage. They came from a multi servo drive system form a machine at work. The tut and operation i found did sound easy.

Just getting it to lase would be fun. Weather it makes a one razor lazor would not be a main goal.


Jarrod's Laser World: Ruby Laser

Charles

That is a neat vintage unit....sorry about all of the political crap, it must be very hard living in Ukraine, and trying to do the work you do with lasers. That is admirable.

When I was a kid there was a book Robert Iannini wrote, "Lasers, Phasers and Ion Ray Guns". In it there were full plans for a Ruby laser, I wanted to build it badly but just couldn't afford the kit, nor the parts.