He-Ne tube from Symbol Technologies LS-6500 - How to power?

[laserdan]

I have in my posession two Symbols Technologies model LS-6500 bar code scanners. There are some nice FS mirrors and a galvometer for scanning. Since I have two, I may remove the galvo's from the he-ne tube to use in building a spirograph or x-y scanner from them some day.

But in the mean time, I want to fire up the He-Ne tube....

I have harvested the he-ne tube out of one of them and, in addition to the thick HV wire, the power brick for the tube has a wire harness with 4 wires.

Two if the wires are red and black. I presume these are the DC power leads for the power brick.

The other two wires are yellow and white w/ black stripe. I presume they are some sort of control or feedback lines.

Does anyone know what those two wires wold be used for, or whether I need to ground them or tie them to + in order for the power supply to be enabled?

Also, what voltage DC do I feed the power brick on the red and black wires?

 

[JLSE]

Its hard to say, you could try posting on PL, there are some older fellas that may have serviced one of these.

You could try jumping the two yellow's, that would be my guess. Have you tested for voltage on either yellow?

 

[timelablasers]

I have some of these supplies.
The white/yellow and red wires go to DC positive. The white/black wire is not used. Black obviously goes to DC negative.
These came in 6vDC and 12vDC. Try 6v first. If nothing happens, try 12v.
Hope that helps.

 

[Hemlock_Mike]

And stay clear of the High Voltage !!!! It will sting you.
One guy sold his here after he got bit just once.

HMike

 

[laserdan]

Ah!, Thanks!

This is the kind of info I was looking for.

A google search for any technical information on this scanner was fruitless.

I have already tried powering up the He-Ne with 12V on red and black and tried both the yellow.white and white/black wires to both + and -, with no results...

Well, I can try again anyway with only the yellow/white and red connected to + and see what happens, but I can't rule out that the unit is dead either. Hopefully if it is, the second unit will still work.

Anyway, regardless of whether the He-Ne tubes work or not, it looks like, with two units, I have the makings of an x-Y scanner with all those FS mirrors and especially the galvo's with the mirrors already attached! I'll have to build my own drivers & MCU for the galvo's (someday ... ha ha... one more project added to the pile).

I guess I will post any further results with the He-Ne tube later, after I get some more time to work on them.

Thanks again for your responses!