Hi everybody,
I'm Steve, and I've been interested in lasers from way back -- I had a friend about 25 years ago who was a laser engineer for Xerox. Always liked visiting his place and checking out all the cool toys. I managed to get him to part with some of them for the right price too. Mostly industrial HeNe heads in the 30mW range with homemade power supplies. My favorite at the time was an ultra cool (to me anyway) HeCd tube with a manually controlled Xerox process supply. It was a handful to start and run because there were no automatic controls -- all voltages and currents were set by hand and you had to keep an eye on things to make sure the cadmium didn't overheat and send the thing spiraling out of control. It had a really cool industrial look and feel to it, and I loved the deep blue light it emitted.
Fast forward 25 years and I send one of my co-workers to Singapore to assist with the opening of a new theme park. He comes back with several cool toys in the form of a trio of 5, 35 and 50mW greenies. I forgot how much fun these things are (not to mention that the smallest thing at the time I was playing with them was about a foot long), so I set out to find some new cool toys of my own. I've been really lookng for a very small (keychain size -- about 2.5" long) 50mW greenie, but they all seem to be the longer pen style. Really looking for something I can put in my pocket. I'm sure I'll eventually get into the higher power burning stuff eventually, but all these companies are new to me, so I need to get a feel of who's who before I drop that kind of change.
So far, I've purchased a 75mW greenie from SkyLasers, and a 50mW small greenie from O-Like (although, haven't received it yet), and hope to enlarge my scope soon.
I'm Steve, and I've been interested in lasers from way back -- I had a friend about 25 years ago who was a laser engineer for Xerox. Always liked visiting his place and checking out all the cool toys. I managed to get him to part with some of them for the right price too. Mostly industrial HeNe heads in the 30mW range with homemade power supplies. My favorite at the time was an ultra cool (to me anyway) HeCd tube with a manually controlled Xerox process supply. It was a handful to start and run because there were no automatic controls -- all voltages and currents were set by hand and you had to keep an eye on things to make sure the cadmium didn't overheat and send the thing spiraling out of control. It had a really cool industrial look and feel to it, and I loved the deep blue light it emitted.
Fast forward 25 years and I send one of my co-workers to Singapore to assist with the opening of a new theme park. He comes back with several cool toys in the form of a trio of 5, 35 and 50mW greenies. I forgot how much fun these things are (not to mention that the smallest thing at the time I was playing with them was about a foot long), so I set out to find some new cool toys of my own. I've been really lookng for a very small (keychain size -- about 2.5" long) 50mW greenie, but they all seem to be the longer pen style. Really looking for something I can put in my pocket. I'm sure I'll eventually get into the higher power burning stuff eventually, but all these companies are new to me, so I need to get a feel of who's who before I drop that kind of change.
So far, I've purchased a 75mW greenie from SkyLasers, and a 50mW small greenie from O-Like (although, haven't received it yet), and hope to enlarge my scope soon.
