Really, Really big Dye Laser

[Alaskan]

Now I'm becoming interested in dye lasers, see what you've done! Planters is my hero, love his you tube videos.

 

[paul1598419]

@Planters
Thank you for giving the specific rhodamine and solvent you use in your dye laser. Also, I found it interesting that you have reached 100J of energy in a single pulse. I'm sure you will find the optics that will handle that amount of energy in a short pulse. I have found this entire project of yours incredibly interesting and will be following it further.

 

[Accutronitis]

As I posted on PL, the INPUT power is at 25% (10 kV), but the OUTPUT is far from linear. It is more like 10%. The beam is extremely visible and the duration has no effect on that other than to make it seem brighter rather than dimmer. One microsecond and 10 msec looks identical to the eye and so the comparison is pertinent to a DJ strobe light. Compare the visibility of a 100W continuous lamp to a 100J, 1pps strobe. Camera protection requires the filter at close range, but not at far range. This laser has been sent 1 km to the base of a cloud deck...its pretty visible. I will show that.

I don't mean to advertise the suppliers and some of the companies I mention, but rather to give the actual sources of what I have found to be useful. I have owned Cynosure lasers, but not Candela lasers despite my comparison.



That's right. The filters that you see the tests through block all the laser light. The flash you see is not some of the laser light, it is the incandescent glow from the plasma ablated off the targets.

Please forgive me as I'm a complete laser newbie but can that laser run for any length of time longer than a very short pulse ? I really like how a yellow laser beam looks and would love to see a laser as powerful as yours shot up into the night sky if only for a brief moment !

That laser is so powerful it needs something like a tile off the bottom of the space shuttle for a back stop !!!

 

[planters]

Please forgive me as I'm a complete laser newbie but can that laser run for any length of time longer than a very short pulse ?

The limit is peak pumping power. Only a laser driven dye laser is able to produce CW or CCW output. For those that are aware of the single attempt to use high intensity arc pumped dye lasers, the output was so minuscule that it is not worth pursuing.

On my Dye laser video "575nm Yellow Dye Laser", I show a laser pumped dye that is what you are probably looking for. It easily illuminates clouds.

The custom optics I have ordered are super polished. These permit higher performance coatings to be applied. I am also looking at modifying my lamp gas mixture to increase the pulse length. This will actually decrease the efficiency somewhat, but the increased pulse length will allow a visibly brighter beam to be generated before damage to optics or targets occurs.

The reason I have built this thing is that it is so open ended. Other colors as well as even much higher powers can be generated with some modifications.

 

[Accutronitis]

The limit is peak pumping power. Only a laser driven dye laser is able to produce CW or CCW output. For those that are aware of the single attempt to use high intensity arc pumped dye lasers, the output was so minuscule that it is not worth pursuing.

On my Dye laser video "575nm Yellow Dye Laser", I show a laser pumped dye that is what you are probably looking for. It easily illuminates clouds.

The custom optics I have ordered are super polished. These permit higher performance coatings to be applied. I am also looking at modifying my lamp gas mixture to increase the pulse length. This will actually decrease the efficiency somewhat, but the increased pulse length will allow a visibly brighter beam to be generated before damage to optics or targets occurs.

The reason I have built this thing is that it is so open ended. Other colors as well as even much higher powers can be generated with some modifications.

I watched the video and not that it matters (I'm a nobody in the laser world) but I am thoroughly impressed ! What a beautiful and incredibly tight & shaped yellow beam !!! Truly !

Now when can I get that quality of yellow beam in a hand held ? JK lol......

 

[H2Oxide]

The limit is peak pumping power. Only a laser driven dye laser is able to produce CW or CCW output. For those that are aware of the single attempt to use high intensity arc pumped dye lasers, the output was so minuscule that it is not worth pursuing.

On my Dye laser video "575nm Yellow Dye Laser", I show a laser pumped dye that is what you are probably looking for. It easily illuminates clouds.

The custom optics I have ordered are super polished. These permit higher performance coatings to be applied. I am also looking at modifying my lamp gas mixture to increase the pulse length. This will actually decrease the efficiency somewhat, but the increased pulse length will allow a visibly brighter beam to be generated before damage to optics or targets occurs.

The reason I have built this thing is that it is so open ended. Other colors as well as even much higher powers can be generated with some modifications.

Thanks for all the info, I'm pumped (hehe) for more videos.

I can't wait to see what you're going to do with this thing. I'll hold back all my other questions for now.

 

[planters]

Now when can I get that quality of yellow beam in a hand held ? JK lol......

Funny you should ask. Another project I am working on is at the other end of the spectrum (so to speak). This is a diode laser pumped....wait for it...dye laser. Who would have thought, but although there has been an enormous amount of work on solid media hosted dyes, the dye degradation remains a problem. To get a high conversion efficiency requires an intense pumping focus and this will still require a flowing dye. How small the cell, pump and reservoir can get is very interesting. If you have some technical background and you start to think about that question you might get a little excited as well.

 

[Accutronitis]

Funny you should ask. Another project I am working on is at the other end of the spectrum (so to speak). This is a diode laser pumped....wait for it...dye laser. Who would have thought, but although there has been an enormous amount of work on solid media hosted dyes, the dye degradation remains a problem. To get a high conversion efficiency requires an intense pumping focus and this will still require a flowing dye. How small the cell, pump and reservoir can get is very interesting. If you have some technical background and you start to think about that question you might get a little excited as well.

Now combine that thought with the thought of how far battery technology like the Li-ion batteries have come in just a short period of time giving us much more power in a smaller & lighter package for greater portability and it get's even more exciting !

 

[planters]

The next wave will come with Mg ion. Twice the voltage per cell.

 

[Accutronitis]

Also coming next is Li-ion that is safe, Even if you drive a nail through it !

 

[Laserbuilder]

Awesome work! Very impressive! This is probably the highest energy dye laser shown ever, here, in public, among amateurs and laser hobbyists. It now makes no sense for me to reanimate my LOS4 dye laser with its tiny 1J output... Because it is really nothing compared to this machine.

 

[Alaskan]

I've got a 4 watt output 532 nm DPSS I'm wanting to use with dye to make yellow now but there are already too many projects I want to do!

 

[planters]

Awesome work! Very impressive! This is probably the highest energy dye laser shown ever, here, in public, among amateurs and laser hobbyists.

Actually, this is one of the highest energy dye lasers shown ever...period.

It now makes no sense for me to reanimate my LOS4 dye laser with its tiny 1J output... Because it is really nothing compared to this machine.

Please reconsider that.

The reason I am posting this video and for that matter all of my videos is not to show off what I have accomplished. I state this wish all through my channel. Sure, I love the support and the compliments, but I am doing this to share what I have learned so that others will be able to take advantage of my approach, the suggestions and the admissions of my mistakes in order to build something for themselves. My subsequent videos will give even more details so that any part of this laser might be leveraged to other projects, say a YAG laser or a Tesla coil or...whatever.

The greatest compliment would be to hear about how you implemented my ideas, verified the value and then improved on them.

 

[Radim]

...

The reason I am posting this video and for that matter all of my videos is not to show off what I have accomplished. I state this wish all through my channel. Sure, I love the support and the compliments, but I am doing this to share what I have learned so that others will be able to take advantage of my approach, the suggestions and the admissions of my mistakes in order to build something for themselves. My subsequent videos will give even more details so that any part of this laser might be leveraged to other projects, say a YAG laser or a Tesla coil or...whatever.

The greatest compliment would be to hear about how you implemented my ideas, verified the value and then improved on them.

Great approach, this I consider as very valuable here. Knowledge and experience you share is something that makes LPF great source (not only) for hobbyists. It is not only about showing the laser you built, but also about how you present it here through videos, followup discussion and so on. I'm looking forward to see more, although I'm not capable to build something like this yet. Thanks again for that.

 

[Alaskan]

...The greatest compliment would be to hear about how you implemented my ideas, verified the value and then improved on them.

I cannot say I have implemented anything from your video yet, but I did find a Coherent Avia laser on ebay fairly cheap which uses fiber to end pump both sides of a YVO4 rod to produce 1064 nm. I learned this from your green DPSS project to use fiber pumping on both sides of a crystal for better efficiency (if long enough) as opposed to the direct output of C-mount diodes which can distort the crystal due to the uneven heating produced by hot spots.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/ab95/LaserProject/Avia 19.jpg

I don't want to take this thread more off topic than my one post on this with the photo here, but I believe this is a UV laser I'm going to try to use at 532 nm by swapping out what I believe is a THG LBO crystal to a SHG crystal. I may end up having to just use the parts from this laser on a different platform to get it to work with some modification to the heater and focus to it, but I believe can be done. I only was able to get part of this laser, no power supply and all of the wires cut, no labels but the seller believed it was an AVIA.

 

[swamidog]

It's 580nm, so it is visible, would be a nice yellow. The pulse is so short that it's difficult to capture on video, plus the absolute need for safety glasses with these sorts of powers. You wouldn't want to take those safety glasses off to see the spot or the beam for the brief fraction of a second that it'd be there. At these powers it should still be visible even with the short pulse duration (someone correct me if I'm wrong?). Not to mention it's just an impressive piece of engineering, especially for a DIY job!

You'd be able to capture a beam shot with a half decent camera and the proper triggering.

Planters, thanks for sharing! Very interesting as always, looking forward to more.

proper triggering probably wouldn't be that hard, but i'd start just by setting the f-stop to something large, the iso to something small, and going with a long exposure.