SOMEONE please help me decide

[Thomaslje]

hi

 

[diachi]

think of it this way...

SOLID STATE WILL ALWAYS BE AROUND

Big gas lasers are a dying breed. Get one while you can.

ALSO... they aren't that expensive to run.

One kilowatt hour where I live is about 8 cents. That means I can run a small 120V argon at 10A for an entire hour and it costs $0.08

So, lets say a lexel 88 is 5 Kilowatts, but on house power it will probably be less. You can run it for an hour and it will cost a whole $0.40. Ten hours for less than 5 bucks...

Yeah they take a lot of power to run, but people dont realize it's not high power items that kill your bill, its all the lower power stuff that runs constantly 24/7

I decided to go with the Lexel Partly cause I didn't want to mess the seller about, and because in a few years it'll be pretty rare It'll need some work done to it when I get it I think, I believe it's only doing 1,9W at 20A or more, and it should be doing around 2,2W at 20A and up to 4W at 30A ( for less than 1 second ). I plan to measure the tube voltage, and tweak the mirrors and see what I get. If the tube voltage is really low , I'll get a refurb done ( Which is like £800, but I don't mind paying that for an extra 5,000-10,000 hours of use )

-Adam

 

[GooeyGus]

wow only 800GBP for a refurb tube is pretty good. Those lexel tubes aren't very costly for some reason.

A refurb (or brand new from cambridge) 168 tube is like $3-6,000   :'(

 

[diachi]

I got quoted on a new tube actually and it's $9,000 for a new lexel 88 tube