Computer tech blog

[Smokey]

Heh, i just found a page where they explained how their 5-10 watt CO² Laser was built... They also explained that 5-10watts of CO² laser can singe wood and melt plastic, aswell as burn flesh/skin and destroy eyes... Makes me wonder what a 50-100watt CO² laser can do ;006

But i will most likely be building a solid-state laser, because gas-powered lasers are too complex to build as a side hobby...

[Dr. Mario]

Entirely doable. You can use three different kind of pumping lamps to pump the laser crystal: LED, laser diode, or Xenon flash lamp.

Oh, and about a 100 Watts CO2 laser, you could really flash-melt the metal brick, just much in a way you would want to cut a stick of frozen with a hot knife. I have a Nickel-Xenon X-ray gas laser and have flash-melted some brick of metal.

Although, I had much success in building a X-ray metal vapor laser, there are two things you should emphasize the same with CO2 laser:

Added after 15 minutes:

Power consumption and cooling. Although I admit that my own homebuilt laser do consume lots of Amps, CO2 laser do eat lot of Amps, in order to hammer the Carbon atoms to be emitting Infrared, in order of 10,600 nanometer. On other hand, my laser actually consumed 4 to 12 Amps at 14 KiloVolts, just enough to jostle Nickel atoms hard enough to be emitting 2.2 nanometer X-ray laser light (over 100 Watts if I bump the Voltage a bit, but it will only serve to overheat both load transformer and transistors.)

[Smokey]

Well, i've found a nice Solid State Laser setup i can build, only question now is where the heck do i find a Ruby or (better) Neodymium YAG rod??

[Dr. Mario]

Try eBay - www.ebay.com - it's your best bet, and, yes they ships oversea (depending on the sellers - most do ship oversea, some do not. Be careful of the fake items, review the seller's history first.)

[Smokey]

Kewl, now the length of the rod isn't that important, it's the power the Xenon flaslamp produces, right?
And of course the quality of the mirrors...  ^_^

[Dr. Mario]

Yep. You got it all right. One trick to get a freaking bright flash for effecient usage of the voltage stored in the high voltage capacitor is to use a horseshoe flashlamp. You can do away with a disposable camera's gut, BE CAREFUL - don't touch the pins of capacitor and the lamp, remove the battery, then short it (if you must, wear the ear protection.) Then desolder the original lamp then use Xenon horseshoe lamp. (Middle wire go to a tiny ignition transformer smaller than the one charging the capacitor.)

[Smokey]

Come to think of it, i can also experiment with different ways of bombarding the rod with photons...

I could line the entire cylinder housing the rod with ultra-bright LEDs shining directly on the rod.. Sure i will lose lots of photons this way, but some 50-100 LEDs  produce one heck of a lot of light nowadays... Osram has even made one that can supply 200 lumens per LED ;006, but those will probably be insanely expensive, i did, however, manage to find high-output LEDs for a reasonable price, only they are red...Wich makes me wonder if i do go for LED-bombarding, does the color of the light make any difference?

Or, i could buy me a 1500W halogen light rod... wich would make construction a lot easier...
Hmm, or to go completely overboardget two 1500W halogen bars, or a rig totalling 3KW, cuz our fuse-boxes here don't go any higher than (220V x 16A) 3520W and it would be fun to be able to sustain a beam long enough to see how effective/destructive it is...

And in case someone doubts the power of halogen (or just for the lulz):
http://www.wickedlasers.com/lasers/Wicked_Lights-74-0.html

[Dr. Mario]

Well, you can lit a laser rod with a halogen bulb, but I don't recommend that - because, for even longer life, the rod like to be in cool area (because of radioactive nature of one particular mineral, a lasant material Neodynium. Too hot, it won't lase, could even blow up.)

And to take the headache out of choosing the LEDs, I'm going to help you pick out the right ones for the pump lamp for particular laser rod's ingerident, ensuring your success:
Nd:YAG / Nd:YVO - 808nm IR LED
Ruby - 590/575nm Yellow LED

[Smokey]

Darn... cuz sticking one or two halogen bars in a tube is a lot easier than customizing a reflective tube to fit lots of LEDs...

Oh, well...better i find it out now, than that my laser blows up and kills me... ^_^

[Dr. Mario]

Oh well, I just like you, and the others who read this forum, to be safe. ;001

I have experienced having the cracks in a Nd:YAG rod due to overheat (from being near the halogen lamp rod).  ;020

[Vegapunk]

I've had that problem once.

[Dr. Mario]

What?! Did the same thing happened to you..! I'm just surprised because exploding Nd:YAG rod is so lethal, that their sharpnels are surgically sharp and will stay hot for up to 20 minute due to a radioactive rare-earth metal Neodynium (same metal used in a rare-earth magnet). If your situation wasn't the same as I had, tell me, Vegapunk - I'm curious still.

[Dr. Mario]

So, Smokey - have you tried LED for laser rod pumping?

I'm more curious about your laser, if it was successful or not.

Shit, I should try and scour the catalog for my NES project... My hard drive got shot, so it will be a while. T^T

[Smokey]

Heh, not yet... i was "smart"enough to visit these guys who told me that most rods found on eBay are already depleted and thus make for poor laser equipment... But they sell new ones, only a bit too expensive for me to work on at this very moment... ;063
Plus i am unable to determine if they even ship to europe...

[Dr. Mario]

That's definitely what I should watch. I heard nothing of depleted Nd:YAG rods. Here's why: Neodynium have an outrageously long decay time, having a Half-life of up to 700+ years. And it's the active ingerdient of the rod's formula.

I would just safely say it's depleted because its former owner is simply a baka, or didn't give a cooling system enough attention.
Like what I suggested, review the eBay seller's history.
(I'm not being mean, but you sometimes have to balance the facts from bullsh*t.)