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Ruby laser

KapHn8d

KapHn8d

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Sorry if this was already posted as I did a quick search, but I'm a big fan of this guy's videos and really enjoyed his design explanation in this one. Not sure how far along he is since I didn't see a follow up, but looking forward to it.



Cheers!
/c
 





yeah it was posted somewhere before, I forget where. very informative. We used a double oval cavity for my friend's.....I want to buy another rod and make myself one. but its crazy expensive due to the inefficiency and the rod cost.

a small yag is like....60 bucks surplus.... an equivelant ruby that is working is like...800+ from a good source. :(
 
I saw this one before. Very interesting. I first saw a laser in 1965 and it was a ruby rod laser using a Xenon discharge tube coiled around the ruby rod. Can't remember what the power was, but remember the short duration red beam of light that was very visible in daylight. I had only read about lasers until that day, and then I was hooked. To watch one fire is unlike anything else I've seen before or since.
 
The great grand daddy of all lasers. A ruby laser was very first laser.

The first laser
Charles H. Townes
from A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World
Laura Garwin and Tim Lincoln, editors

When the first working laser was reported in 1960, it was described as "a solution looking
for a problem." But before long the laser's distinctive qualities—its ability to generate an
intense, very narrow beam of light of a single wavelength—were being harnessed for
science, technology and medicine. Today, lasers are everywhere: from research laboratories
at the cutting edge of quantum physics to medical clinics, supermarket checkouts and the
telephone network.

Theodore Maiman made the first laser operate on 16 May 1960 at the Hughes Research
Laboratory in California, by shining a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod with silver-coated
surfaces. He promptly submitted a short report of the work to the journal Physical Review
Letters, but the editors turned it down. Some have thought this was because the Physical
Review had announced that it was receiving too many papers on masers—the longer-
wavelength predecessors of the laser—and had announced that any further papers would
be turned down.

I'll bet he felt like Rodney Dangerfield........ "Can't get no respect"
 
As a little kid -- RUBY was my dream!!!
Too many toys, too little time -- and $ :-(
HMike
 
I can't believe you Mike, quit stealing my story :crackup:
I did the same thing when I was about 10 years old ruby lasers were in the news and I was going to build one ASAP :whistle:



I was about 12 years old when this happened, I had this 10K gold ring that had a reddish clear stone I used to wear
around all the time and I was camping with my family in northern CA. and I was sitting by a stream when a lady asked
me about my ring, well I spun a story of one day making it into a ruby laser and my story took that woman back,
she was smiling from ear to ear knowing I was too young to know what I was talking about but it was very
interesting to her that I could spin such a yarn about making a laser out of the stone in my ring :crackup:

I had forgotten about that until now :thinking:




Hemlock_Mike said:
As a little kid -- RUBY was my dream!!!
Too many toys, too little time -- and $ :-(
HMike
Click to expand...
 
Hemlock_Mike said:
As a little kid -- RUBY was my dream!!!
Too many toys, too little time -- and $ :-(
HMike
Click to expand...

I had the same dream too, it was the early 70's & I was ten years old when I saw in my school library a book that showed that first laser in pictures and diagrams. I went and tried to see about getting the components (or at least a good approximation) and a ruby crystal. I would have been able to afford everything with my parents help but the ruby crystal price was too much and nobody in my family was going to help with that one so it stayed a dream. :cryyy:
 
Commander, that was my childhood. I knew all about lasers by the time I saw my first one in '65. I would have given anything to build one back then, but like you I didn't have the resources.
 
I've got some ideas for a new diode laser @ 690nm... But after that I'm planning to make a ruby laser at some point. It's expensive and inefficient however.

But it is fun to pump it like a sapphire rod with green laser light!
 
Come on. Surely someone has heard of Dennis Gabor. I consider him to be the father of lasers.
 
Very true. but ultimately someone else concepted the stimulated emission that led to lasers. He just is the one who knew things that could be done with it. A brilliant, brilliant man.
 
Ruby lasers became a dream after seeing Goldfinger...

laserbond.jpg
 
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