Anyone got any info on

[Things]

Hey guys, Sometime in the next few week's i'll be getting a little argon laser.

It's a NEC GLG 3030 I believe, and apparently it's only doing 5mw or so currently.

I believe it has external mirrors, can anyone confirm this? Any manuals or general information would be nice

 

[ElektroFreak]

There's a TON of info on them in Sam's FAQ.. probably enough to supplant a manual. Since a bunch of that section was written by Steve (you know who I mean) you should ask him too, if you haven't already..

 

[Things]

Hmm didn't think about Steve, I'll shoot him a PM on PL too.

I did see Sam's FAQ, but didnt find much on the actual laser there, just startup problems.

 

[ElektroFreak]

Well. TBH I didn't read all the links I found to Sam's FAQ, but there was a ton of them.. they might have been all troubleshooting, though. Not outside the realm of possibility.

 

[GooeyGus]

if it does have external mirrors, give the brewster stems a good cleaning with methanol and optics tissue (only use optics tissue... buy some if you dont have any. anything else might scratch and will leave residue and kill power).

Also, clean the mirrors themselves using the same materials.

After that, give it a good alignment and you should be good to go. Remember, only do ONE side at a time, so when it goes back together and you need to find lasing again, you'll know it is only one mirror which is out of alignment. If you take both off at once, you'll probably need to "shoot the bore" with a HeNe or similar laser. Not a huge deal, but its much easier to just do one at a time so you dont have to worry about it.

Adjusting the mirrors themselves is easy, just adjust ONE screw at a time until the power has peaked. Try not to lose lasing while you are doing this and if you do, do not change anything else until you have lasing again. I dont know how exactly those mirrors are adjusted, but I'm guessing it's the typical three-screw setup.

 

[potatorage]

What's optics tissue?

 

[diachi]

This one uses an internal mirror ion tube but with external mirror adjusters for fine tuning.

The tube is all glass and will do between 5 and 30mW, depending on its condition.