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FrozenGate by Avery

Need Thoughts on hids and rods

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flare09

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Hey all.

I did a search and couldn't find any previous post regarding using xenon or xenon /Krypton mix hid bulbs for pumping nd yag rods.

The reason I'm interested is that I've recently come by some very nice silicon Steel laminations that I need to laser cut. I have a cnc that I could adopt a laser head too. And thought of using this setup to cut the Laminations.

There are several reasonably priced nd yag and ruby rods currently listed on ebay right now, and no reasonable flash lamps, cavities, hv sources, etc.

Now the question is, do you think, with the right custom made cavity, one could pump (either qswitch or cw) a proper rod with a few xenon, xenon/Krypton hid lamps for car headlights, and generate a decent beam powerful enough to punch through thin steel?
 





A Ruby Laser could punch holes thru the steel but would not cut it. Ruby is a pulsed laser. It also needs to be pumped with Megawatts of Flash power to do it. A CW Ruby laser is not realy possible. I suppose you could punch holes one at a time. But a very slow way to do it and not a very neat cut.

An Nd-Yag Laser is a much more efficient laser than Ruby but I dont think you could CW enough power to Cut with it. Certainly punch holes thru it. As for HID lamps. I would think they are noware near enough output for what you need.

There are much more knowedgable member here who will give better advice.
 
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The lights I have been looking at are about 100w. The ratings seem so obscure and it is difficult to know what actual light output efficiency is. A pair would run me about $15. Maybe I could run them pulsed?

As far as how slow it takes, that's fine. I could program the cnc to run 1/2mm a min. Punch holes at 1hz, as long as it's not excessively heating up the metal around it
 
Xenon and Xenon/Krypton flashlamps can indeed optically pump Nd:YAG. But the doping concentration of the Nd would differ from diode pumped systems. I can't say for sure off the top of my head that car hid's would be sufficient pumping power for a high power YAG based system, but I would put my bet more on it working as there isn't really any difference between those lamps and the flash lamps being used anyway.

I did find this on a quick browse that supports this judgement.

The HID xenon lamp is excitation source and ND:YAG crystal is working media. The radiation light of HID xenon lamp focuses on ND: YAG crystal symmetrically and effectively to get the highest pumping efficiency. HID xenon lamp excites ND:YAG Crystal to generate laser beam.
Click to expand...

Laser generating theory for YAG laser cutting machine <---LINK

You would have to do some research into flashlamp pumped yag's and find out what doping they typically require. CW YAG's can cut through thin steel.

Not the best resource but again, it was a quick browse. Here is 37W of 1064nm.

A more thorough search will get you plenty of resources. :)

Edit: CW Ruby's are possible but incredibly difficult in practice to achieve.
 
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Silicon Steel laminations, laminations as in stacked steel plates laminated, or do you have various hardness layers that have been forged? either way those are best cut IIRC with a diamond coated wire saw, like a band saw but with a diamond coated wire because heat from laser or plasma could ruin the lamination, regardless of the size of your plates using a laser is not the way to go and would require a very expensive laser system, all you need is a band/wire saw.

p.s. I have cut a lot of steel box bar and angle iron with a band saw ( fine tooth heat treated metal cutting blade ) don't use your wood blade, and with coolant running as I cut. Now you could probably cut laminated steel with a metal cutting blade, but I have not so find out if you need to use a diamond wire or not, either way I'm sure you will want coolant running as you cut and cut slowly.
 
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I have plain fully finished sheets ready to be cut. Hmm a diamond wire would be a really great way, , but difficult to cut the pattern by hand. I figured I would have to do a final ennealing after I stacked the cuts. The issue with the physical material such as bladed cutting, is that the size of the cutting blades are too large for the detail on the stator. The OD is 15mm with 9 teeth internally.

If only 37W can do that to a blade, i may not need the power i initially thought...

Previous research was suggesting I needed around 900W to cut the steel. I may have access to 120W co2. Though I know the wavelength is, what 10 times longer? Would that make a difference? The steel is vaporizing regardless?

I know all the info I need for making the laser is out there. Optics, focusing, electronics, triggers. But i just couldn't find anything on using headlights to pump a rod.

So, feasibly yes. The concept should work.
 
CO2 or fiber but CO2 will cost you less even though fiber is taking over it's still expensive.

Material thickness matters, how thick is your material and is it laminated sheets or laminated steel that's 1 sheet with various hardness layers?

Here's a 260W CO2 cutting 1.8mm and a 500w Fiber cutting 8mm


 
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flare09 said:
Hey all.

I have a cnc that I could adopt a laser head too.

There are several reasonably priced nd yag and ruby rods currently listed on ebay right now, and no reasonable flash lamps, cavities, hv sources, etc.

Now the question is, do you think, with the right custom made cavity, one could pump (either qswitch or cw) a proper rod with a few xenon, xenon/Krypton hid lamps for car headlights, and generate a decent beam powerful enough to punch through thin steel?
Click to expand...

Keep in mind you'll probably have to use fiber or bounce mirrors to get the laser light out to the work piece. If it's using a gantry or something similar then mounting the laser to that directly is often impractical. You'll want to buy a proper laser cutter head too. The laser cutter head has your focusing optics, plumbing for gas assist/nozzle for gas assist, height adjustment and focal point adjustment.

Define "reasonably priced". How much do you want to spend?

How many lamps do you have? What wattage are they? Can you fabricate a suitable pump chamber with water cooling? How thick is the steel?

flare09 said:
I have plain fully finished sheets ready to be cut. Hmm a diamond wire would be a really great way, , but difficult to cut the pattern by hand. I figured I would have to do a final ennealing after I stacked the cuts. The issue with the physical material such as bladed cutting, is that the size of the cutting blades are too large for the detail on the stator. The OD is 15mm with 9 teeth internally.

If only 37W can do that to a blade, i may not need the power i initially thought...

Previous research was suggesting I needed around 900W to cut the steel. I may have access to 120W co2. Though I know the wavelength is, what 10 times longer? Would that make a difference? The steel is vaporizing regardless?
Click to expand...

What about sending the material off to be cut on a wire EDM machine? Those machines can achieve incredible tolerances and very fine cuts.

That depends how thick your material is and how quickly you want to cut it. Using an oxygen gas assist would likely improve the results dramatically.

Again, depends on the thickness. CO2 usually requires more power, metals are typically quite reflective at 10.6μm.

 
Here's a YAG cutting, they show you the chamber @ 3:05, it's no doubt CW but what are they pumping that monster with and how much loss?

 
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I believe it is fully finished m19 grade silicon Steel, with a laminated coating. The sheet is supposedly .014" thick. I'm not sure if there are various hardness levels through the thickness, but i doubt it. I know there would be various crystalline arrangements, being silicon Steel.

Yeah, I could very well send it off for laser, edm, or stamping. But where would be the fun in not learning something new?

The head would be the optics, and all things needed to keep the lense from collecting material. Positive pressure, cutting gas. I imagined the setup would be sent down the x and y axis on the corner from outside the machine.

I do have a way to fabricate the reflectors and make a cooling jacket. I could try doing 4, 100 watt hid lights, arranged around the rod. Or focusing 1 down the center of the hr coated side.

Since this is a proof of concept, I didn't want to put in more than 100 intially. If it works, I could really drop some money and make a really nice set up.

Over all it looks like 100W is plenty of power. At lets say 10% 6 hids could pull me 60watt. I have a spare ballast and xenon bulb... Ill look at the bays current assortment.
 
flare09 said:
At lets say 10% 6 hids could pull me 60watt.
Click to expand...

You may want to rethink this idea, based on this alone.

Professionally built commercial systems with long arc lamps, high quality/carefully chosen optics, properly designed resonators and high quality/well designed pump chambers can't even reach 2% efficiency at best. I'd be impressed if you could reach 1%.
 
Oh man I had no idea the efficiency was so low!!

I would do better focusing the hid bulbs with a fresnal lense and trying to cut with that! &#55358;&#56611;&#55358;&#56611;
 
Arc lamps and Flash tubes are not very good at pumping ND-Yag. It has a narrow absorbtion band around 808 nm.

If you can afford to pump it with 808nm Diodes you will get a much improved effiency.



Hahaha. Now I think about that, it is a silly comment. Why not just use a high power 808nm array.
 
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You need to rethink your problem.

Your problem isn't that you need a big flash lamp. Your problem isn't that you need a YAG laser. Your problem isn't even "I need to laser cut these steel laminations". Your problem might be closer to "I need to cut these steel laminations", but I can't even say that for sure. What are you building with these steel laminations?
 
I'm custom building a brushless motor for a project. The OD of the motor is 15mm and Id is 8mm. With 9 stator teeth internally. I looked around for a long time and contacted a dozen China suppliers. Custom made motors are around 500 to start.

If i could have made my own laser cutter, I could use it for plenty of other things.
 
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