Recent content by ultimatekaiser

Pretty much. If the tube is sealed with all glass seals, or with frit (kind of like solder for glass), it shouldn't leech any gasses at any rate that matters. If it is sealed via a low vapor pressure epoxy or similar, it may or may not lose gasses or leak over time. This is why alot of the old...

Spectra-Physics used to make the best lasers... I have some of the oldest ones they ever made. Truly astonishing craftsmanship at times, much like tektronix stuff. the 196 is a great tube, I think most of them tend to do about 3 mW new iirc.

Yeah, borosilicate glass is pretty high temperature and hard to work with so usually those will be blown separately and then they will be joined with an intermediary glass that is easier to use. That’s also why there’s a hint of green at the end, as that is where the fill stem was.

Fun but expensive project. And yes they would be very expensive because they have to be absolutely rigid and precise. It depends on the gain of the medium involved. This is referred to as single pass gain, And generally the answer to it is no. But there are some instances where you definitely...

It’s because the tube is assembled by hand in sections. The joints probably use a glass that has a dopant in it to adjust its thermal properties. Sometimes the bore will be made with a similar type of glass, usually a rare earth metal to make it more stable and help prevent the discharge from...

That should probably work. Do keep in mind that after you turn off running the laser you should leave the fan running for a couple of minutes to cool it off after. When I turn mine off the fan stays on for I think it’s two minutes or 2 1/2 minutes to bring the temperature of the tube back down...

yeah pretty much any 150CFM + fan is probably adequate. airflow should be in through the sides and exhausted out the top. getting a shroud'll be the hard bit to get. You might try meredith instruments, sometimes they have stuff laying around like that. you could also probably get one from a...

At least you have a newer one that only needs one fan! Mine actually has two papst fans that are like jet engines on top! Finding the shroud will be hard but I can give you the model of the fan used. You can also buy separate ones. A lot of those came out of confocal microscopes and a lot of...

Yeah unfortunately orange is just not a realistic thing to make into a pointer. That may change in coming years though since the technology now exists to make a DPSS Orange. As mentioned before the only other option would be a very small orange helium neon laser tube. I have a couple of little 6...

I have a few omnichromes that are still running... I can tell you pretty much anything you wanna know about them. Definitely go with an omnichrome or Kimmon. Liconix ones are definitely dead by this point. It’s virtually guaranteed unless someone has serviced them recently. Unfortunately the...

yeah the tube is likely fine unless it is leaky or broken. it's rare for most coaxial tubes to go bad just sitting though. I'd be inclined to check the psu and that you're powering it correctly. I'm with cyparagon. complete board views would be helpful. It's likely a simple little supply.

It all just depends on what you need from your meter. They're somewhat inaccurate and slow over the long term. But they are plenty adequate for most hobbyist applications. For measuring your relatively high power blue build that you’ve just made or something like that they're plenty fine...

Well considering most of them are 1K+ new, even 500 isn't bad for a working one in calibration tbh. Its just that most people are on a budget and don't want to spend that much. We used to pay 4-500 all the time for them when I was new to the forum. Anything less was a steal. I think i paid $375...

Out of curiosity, Did you ever get this working? I actually just stumbled across one of these (though mine is the smaller tube version (there are two versions of the same model) I got it working with no issues. I can confirm it is indeed a 12V supply, however like alot of other lasers of this...

Yes. a green laser isn't really green at first it's actually 3 lasers in one! which is why they are more expensive than diode pointers. ;) They're an 808nm IR diode pumping a crystal to get 1064nm IR light, which is then frequency doubled to 532nm light which we see as a bright green. The...