Does anyone repair and regas these?
I just had a similar experience with a 612 nm bare orange tube. Was working perfectly in an old laser chorus viper head. I was cleaning up the galvo mirrors & doing some small maintenance items like adding a fuse to the input side of the HeNe power supply. The tube was rotated slightly in its mount so that the label with part # & serial # was partially unreadable. Because I "had" to have it perfect, I loosened the mounts, rotated the tube slightly and tightened the mounts.
When I powered it back up, I literally felt sick to my stomach. It sputtered & flickered and made the PS brick whine. The small glass area around the anode pin developed a very tiny crack - could only see it looking closely after the laser quit from the anode wire pulling on it. Within an hour all the HeNe was released and the tube no longer does anything. It has been about 3 weeks since this happened and it still makes me feel sick.
To make things worse, this is the bare tube that emits a beam from BOTH ends. I have several of the single output Orange tubes and would have been less sick if one of those broke, but this is the only double ended orange I have, other than one that is intact but the mirrors have gotten out of alignment so no beam output. I am going to attempt to align the mirrors using the method on SAM's LASERFAQ but I am hesitant to handle the tube when it is energized. I have been shocked by one of these in the past and it is much less than pleasant.
Eric in New Orleans
I just had a similar experience with a 612 nm bare orange tube. Was working perfectly in an old laser chorus viper head. I was cleaning up the galvo mirrors & doing some small maintenance items like adding a fuse to the input side of the HeNe power supply. The tube was rotated slightly in its mount so that the label with part # & serial # was partially unreadable. Because I "had" to have it perfect, I loosened the mounts, rotated the tube slightly and tightened the mounts.
When I powered it back up, I literally felt sick to my stomach. It sputtered & flickered and made the PS brick whine. The small glass area around the anode pin developed a very tiny crack - could only see it looking closely after the laser quit from the anode wire pulling on it. Within an hour all the HeNe was released and the tube no longer does anything. It has been about 3 weeks since this happened and it still makes me feel sick.
To make things worse, this is the bare tube that emits a beam from BOTH ends. I have several of the single output Orange tubes and would have been less sick if one of those broke, but this is the only double ended orange I have, other than one that is intact but the mirrors have gotten out of alignment so no beam output. I am going to attempt to align the mirrors using the method on SAM's LASERFAQ but I am hesitant to handle the tube when it is energized. I have been shocked by one of these in the past and it is much less than pleasant.
Eric in New Orleans
