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FrozenGate by Avery

Remember to exercise those argons!

Sigurthr said:
It's much better to run them at 7 amps than 4 amps, idle current and lower actually hurts tube life.
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Are you sure about that? The life-time charts on the FAQ disagree, and I've heard of several heads being pulled from sequencers (which are run at idle) that have many thousands of hours on the meter and still output like they were new.
 





Yeah I learned it from the FAQ; lower currents allow the arc to wander on the electrodes which causes extra wear. I remember seeing a chart that shows that there is better lifetime at 6A than 4A as well.
 
Awww, my poor baby is in an offsite storage unit, and I cannot readily access it to set those beautiful 488nm photons free. :(

According to Sam Goldwasser, tube current should be set to 8 amps once it ignites (this is for a Spectra-Physics 161B-060 air cooled argon laser head) and then allowed to operate that way for two hours.
 
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Had my little argon running for a bit tonight. Haven't had it on in a while. Fired right up though. I'm working on a last minute idea for a beam projector to bring to SELEM. I'll have my 1W argon going thru this. Just an AOM and fiber launcher. Can't select colors with this, but it will work nicely for raw beam effects.
 

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I was a bad boy and didn't get around to giving my argon a workout in September. Remedying that now!
 
Well my argon is living up to its "pretty blue space heater" nickname. After being without heat for nearly three days here it's currently running to warm the place up a bit.
 
First weekend of the month (and year!) so time to fire up the argons. Time time since I got a second controller for Christmas I'm able to run both tubes at once for the first time. Oddly enough the controller I just got from MI didn't fire the cylindrical style head I wanted it for but works fine on my rectangular style head. The controller I had been using on the rectangular style head works fine on both. Same model (2500) just made a few months apart.
 
It's been regularly getting below negative 20F lately, so I've been using my argon as a room heater.
 
When its -20 outside suddenly they don't seem to throw off as much heat as you want them to in the basement. Brr
 
hwang21 said:
*electricity bill arrives* :eek:
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Lol'd

this was my thought due to the results...but I can say i've used mine as a lil blue heater for short periods myself... it fell to about 10 here, so not quite as cold as out east, but had a hella time keeping warm with no heater. thus the argon ran low power for a couple hours, heating me up and giving it its monthly excercise :D
 
hwang21 said:
*electricity bill arrives* :eek:
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IIRC power is about 10 cents a kWh here so unless you're running it at full blast (which will kill the tube rather quickly) for hours on end every day it's not that expensive to run. It probably cost me about 25-30 cents to run both for an hour or so last night. They did raise the room temp by 4°F too :p
 
Been awhile since I've bumped this.

Giving my higher powered head one last good long burn before I have to put it in storage for a while.
 
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