Some new lasers! :D

[Blarg King]

The past 2 days have been excellent for my laser hobby. First on Monday I got my WickedLasers Fusion and LaserGlow Libra that I bought off DJNY, and then today I got my Uniphase Novette Helium Neon laser!

First up, my Uniphase Novette!

Its in remarkably good condition!

Theres an odd blue glow inside the lens assembly. Not sure what its from, but it looks cool.

It has a neat feature. The indicator light on the top is actually just a clear window that lets the light from the tube shine through:

Made in 1993! 21 years old! Older than me even.

This emits 633 nm light. Nearly identical to a 638 diode. Ton of splash around the dot. Has decent divergence, around 1.7 mRad.

Next, my LaserGlow Libra. At 5mW of 638, its a pretty unremarkable laser, but the host looks nice, and since its actually 5 mW I can feel safe using it with my cat.

Pew Pew!

Finally, my WickedLaser Fusion. At 80 mW of 532, this is the brightest green laser I've ever owned!

Love them or hate them, they make some decent looking hosts. I'm a fan of the brass text with the black body!

The beam is razor thin out of the aperture:

Unfortunately, the beam hits the aperture slightly, and makes a huge glare:

Divergence isn't great, but it makes up for it with its sheer brightness. And clean TEM00.

To space!

 

[vortish]

I to just got a novette in trade but mine will be the 1508 while yours is the 1507 I can wait for mine

 

[IsaacT]

Vortish this is offtopic but what does your avatar mean? Took me forever to figure out what it said:

I thought what I'd pretend I was, one of those deaf-mutes

On topic though those lasers look great! i am somewhat lacking in my red collection right now, I need to get on that train sometime. Just too many blue lasers I want to build haha.

 

[NightExplorer96]

Awesome pictures Blarg King. I have the Libra(and as you said) it's a great little guy. Have fun

-Alex

 

[vortish]

IsaacT My avi is the laughing man symbol from Ghost in the Shell the Stand Alone Complex. You can find these little Novettes on Ebay some times for 60 dollars

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Welcome to the gassy side nice new stuff man. I can help you clean up the novette.

 

[Blarg King]

Clean it?

 

[trussmonkey25]

I had one of these in the mid eighties. I had an early intrest in lasers then..it long disappeared afer i got married to my first husband

 

[hwang21]

That Novette looks pretty dirty... cleaning up those lenses might help! That blue glow you're talking about is characteristic of HeNe's, no issues there :beer:

And that Fusion's divergence looks rather funny... the Executive series had pretty good divergence paired with a razor thin beam diameter, which is why they were so popular... IIRC it was 1.2 or 1.5 mRad divergence, 0.8mm beam diameter

And I hate beams hitting the aperture, it ruins the nice clean dot for me but great lasers you've got there! Take good care of that WL Fusion, there aren't many of those left around :drool:

 

[Blarg King]

Ah I see. For cleaning the lenses, is rubbing alcohol safe? Are there any AR coatings that might get damaged?

 

[DJNY]

Ah I see. For cleaning the lenses, is rubbing alcohol safe? Are there any AR coatings that might get damaged?

I use this one fpr cleaning lenses: Amazon.com : 1 oz. Formula MC Lens Cleaner : Camera Liquid Cleaners : Camera & Photo

 

[LtKernelPanic]

Those little novettes are cool. I almost bought one a few weeks ago until I found an 1145P head for $100 and snatched it up.

I can remember back in 8th grade our science teacher setting up a similar HeNe and modulating the beam with a radio (how he did escapes me now), shooting it down the hall to a photo diode that had a small speaker hooked to it.

 

[Sigurthr]

That was a pretty standard demonstration for classrooms. They generally used AOMs to modulate the beam because there's a tiny bandwidth for AM modulation of the tube via input current due to the tube's narrow drive range and nonlinearity.

Yep, the blue glow is normal. HeNe gas mixture has emission lines throughout the visible spectrum, but there's too low of gain for any line below 543nm so they don't make mirrors that would allow it to lase. Off the top of my head it takes something like the giant several meter long bore RF excited HeNes of old to get even close to enough gain to lase on one of the low wavelength lines. I remember reading a paper about it years ago. It was abandoned because HeCd is much more feasible.

 

[ChaosLord]

Yeah, I did a little project a few years ago sending a radio signal via laser.

This one, actually.

Those are nice. I've been getting tempted to get into gas lately. Maybe one day...

 

[Blarg King]

Ah okay. Thought the blue might just be some kind of AR or polarization stuff.

 

[ultimatekaiser]

Yeah the blue is the non coherent light that the dielectric mirrors are allowing to pass, since their peak reflectivity is set in the red, most HeNe mirrors do that pretty readily.