Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

Buy Site Supporter Role (remove some ads) | LPF Donations

Links below open in new window

FrozenGate by Avery

11W Self-Contained CuBr CVL (laser pr0n).






That is one badass laser! So beautiful.

The real question is of course.....
....can it pop balloons?
 
This is likely the best CVL/CuBr on youtube. I've watched this vi maybe half a dozen times now.

Brings back the urge to start building one of these again .... 578nm is just so tempting.

If only I did not live in the wretched dorm!
 
I hear ya bloomie. Excellent photography of the unit itself AND the output, getting both is very rare. Most CVL imagery is crappy stills.

Now if only I could find HeHg, HeSe, and SrVL videos like this.
 
Unfortunately, Nobody is DIY'ing gas tubes anymore, and there are only a handful of professionally manufactured HeSes out there. Never any HeHgs (that I know of) and I have no idea what a SrVL is...

So anything will be blurry stills, and bad polaroids scanned into jpgs.

EDIT: Strontium vapor lasers in the NIR range. I couldn't get much joy out of one of those to be honest :/ It'd be awesome for the novelty, but hard to show off a 10W ~6.5um laser.
 
Last edited:
bloompyle said:
Very neat. I will need to read more about these.

They also do IR.

EDIT: Seems to be designed exactly the same way as a CVL. Thankfully different from a CuBr/CuCl in that you do not need alternating pulses to disassociate the two.
Click to expand...

Interesting about the IR versions, I didn't know they existed. Yup, they're single pulse pumped. As much as I love CVLs I don't think I'd ever consider building one, if given the means and budget, just due to the pump complexity. N2 lasers are in a similar boat. The only reason I tried one once is the pseudo simplicity in construction (poor dielectric availability and imperfections in electrode materials robbed me of a working laser, sadly). SrVLs always seemed to me like a major improvement over HeCd, and I could never figure out why they were not more prevalent (for visible wavelengths anyway, UV HeCd's are another unicorn).
 
Beautiful laser here. This is my ultimate goal in lasers. Hopefully in a few years ill be able to make it happen.

Basic idea is to use some of these insanely powerful SCR pucks I have to dump some low esr caps into handwound ferrite transformers. Trigger SCR with some simple square wave circuit. Power source to charge the caps will be a rectified MOT with some large caps for smoothing, put a big inductor between the filter caps and the little firing cap so they don try to dump into the transformer too. Might have to get fancy to make sure the scr deactivates after every fire, inductor alone might not be enough. I have all the calculations for this thing written down somewhere to make sure the frequency keeps the atoms dissocated, power levels are right, etc. Heat the tube with quarts rods from a toaster oven. Use Sams laser faq as a guide on making the mirror mounts.

I have basically all the parts I need, I just haven't had the time to really get it built. Also I have doubts about whether my circuit will work very well.

Ill race you bloom, see who gets one built first haha
 
The Strontium laser was not marketed in the US due to patents. Selenium was marketed briefly but never caught on.

I once was working with a fellow to try to locate the few Russian SR tubes imported to the US. The Tubes were stolen in a mysterious manner, during shipping. Sam had him call me, in case I saw them pass by. At the time, late 90s, interesting. Now, not so, because your average 445 diode blows them away in output power.


There is a book that sums up everything you need to know about building small CVLs and CuBr,(and other metals) but one must read Russian to understand it. A few pages are in English but the rest is in Russian and Bulgarian. It was very, very interesting on interlibrary loan. I don't speak Russian, but I do understand their units of measurement and drawings. The English translation is little better.

I've been up close to the CuBrs imported to Canada for laser shows, the Tube is not difficult to make for skilled glassblower. The seven Kilohertz thyratron based power supply is not so easy. The CuBrs had a compact transformer in them, about 3 Kv at 5 amps. 15 Kw transformer, Not so easy to come by. The specialized inductors were something else entirely.... The Russians loved vacuum tube and thyratron technology, and most of those parts would have never been available in the US.
This is because "we" took the solid state path in the cold war.

Sealed ceramic CuBr tubes from 1 watt and up are still made in Russia. You still need that 4-7 KHz power supply.

The thyratrons are still made, as well, but importing them would be something else.


If you want LIGHT reading, this is it:

G. G. Patrash is the author of choice for small CuBr.

•Metal Vapor and Metal Halide Lasers (English Translation, hard to read)
Edited by G. G. Patrash
Nova Science Publishers
283 Commack Road, Suite 300
Commack, New York 11725
ISBN 0-9417-4327-6

•Lazery na parakh metallov i ikh galogenidov (metal vapor and chalcogenide lasers) (Russian)
Proceedings of the Lebedev Physics Institute
Academy of Sciences of the USSR
Series Editor: N. G. Basov
Volume 181


Here is the guy who did it at "home". I emailed him about his average power, and the big one is only doing about 30 mW.

:: Pulslaser ::

Microsoft Translate does a good job on the above....

Steve
 
Last edited:
Overall, as mentioned, a CVL/CuBr/CuCl is not a terribly difficult unit to construct, tube-wise. It's no more than any other basi tube design, minus the addition of Cu. As well as a heater for said Cu.

The complication comes with the power supply needed for the pulses. Even more complicated when using CuBr/CuCl. With the need for alternating pulses, double digit nanoseconds apart, with alternating voltages .... things get a bit ... "wibbly".

I have several books around that I use for reference.

One of my favorites, also has several pages on the varieties of CVLs. Including pure Cu, and CuBr/CuCl based tubes.

Gas Lasers, Endo Walter

LSRFAQ previously mentioned this in another thread where interest was around various MVLs, including HeHgs, HeCds, HeSes, and CVLs.

The book can go for quite a bit, I got it for a "cheap" cost of ~$25, in brand new, still hearing crackling when I open it, condition.

Best of luck to the intellectuals willing to put in the time for these beasts. These aren't your average plug-n-play HeNe type lasers.

~Reeber
 
Thank you for the wonderful post, LSRFAQ! That would explain why I never see any SrVLs. In the HV fields (particularly in Tesla Coiling) Russians often have some truly amazing toys that we in the west have no hope of getting hold of. Sad to see SrVL is on that list. Thanks for the link to that site too, fascinating and awe inspiring work on there. I love the PbVL, N2, and Ruby lasers he has built.

Maybe one day I'll revisit a TEA N2. I nearly had success but I couldn't get a stable and good performing electrode arrangement, and my dielectric kept melting from proximity to the arc channel.

Aye Bloom, I'm sure I mentioned it before; the power supply situation is why I would never bother attempting a CVL.

As much as the intellectual in me would absolutely love some of the fine references mentioned in this thread and others, my wallet would never allow me. There's a whole list of books that I would love to have, but they tend to be several hundred dollars each.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.





Back
Top