UK Meet ..anyone suggested this yet ?

[andy_con]

hey Robin,

would luv to meet you mate finally LOL.

put a face to the name

[stanwax]

Hey Robin
it will be nice to meet you - you are not very far away from me & tho we have never met or communicated I have something that may stir a memory for you from about 5 years ago....

Rob

[uk-laser]

Hang on - my bat senses are tingling....
Is it blue & blows out a lot of hot air - 'bout a kW worth?

[stanwax]

hahahaha damn right it does and involves a dodgy torroid and a gold SMPS with the word SCRAP written on the underside in marker pen

Rob

[uk-laser]

That PSU was a prototype for a flight simulator projector.
It was killed 2 or 3 times by vibrating it at increasing g levels on a shaker table. Each time it blew up we fixed that bit of component mounting mechanics. It has a PFC front end so takes a nice sinewave current from the mains. When it was scrapped off I repaired it one last time and moded it for adjustable current o/p. It was only intended to do 550W but as the PFC front end was designed to do 550W from 90V input so at 230/240V in the PFC will do well over a kW. The torroid was a 120W 15-0-15 with the secondary removed and rewound with cooker wire to give 1.5-0-1.5 at 30A (90W total) Before I had the SMPS I ran the head from a vintage 3.5kVA 240 to 110 V isolating transformer - vented, steel cased, pole mount - weighed 55kg! + a bridge rectifier, 34000uF 200V cap bank & resistor array.

[stanwax]

Far out!
I have been inside that PSU and seen the - erm - mods *cough*. actually I was pretty impressed by what you had done to it - especially as I think there was a sticker on the case with its rated output on which bore no resemblance to what you had wired it to do.
I took it all out of the delapidated case or should I say chassis it was in and built it into an old AT PC desktop case. I ran it like that for a bit - when I could afford the leccie but it got increasingly difficult to start from cold. I got hold of a brand new 30mW sp161 and a good second hand PSU so never ran it after that - except to test the SP psu. When hooked up to a proper PSU (no disrespect) the tube fired first hit and ran ok - still only about 9mW with a wind behind it.
I still have all the bits tho the tbe and PSU are separated and I doubt it will see light again - I did try and sell the tube about 2 years ago on ebay but got dicked around by the high bidder and never followed it up.

Dont know what happend to Gus who you sold it to. Last time I saw him was at a Kraftwerk concert in Manchester in 2004 but I didnt speak to him.

I now have moved on to better (and bigger) things in terms of ion lasers as you will see at the meet - only now I have a pretty good (7-8kW) water heater instead of a 1 kW space heater

its a small world this world of laser geekery

See you on the 12th

Rob

[Aidan]

Good afternoon all,

I’m a little late to this project but it looks interesting.

As somebody who goes to Alton-Towers yearly for the laser show on Halloween this meeting sounds like literal heaven to me....

Fluff seems to be a very good sport putting up what he has.

Sadly I had to stop fiddling with lasers by command of the Mrs and funds, so all I have is a small DPSS and a 250mw argon (ALC60), laughable looking at some of your rigs. (But I can bring cooler full of strongbow or something + lifting bod for any heavy kit)

But I would love to see these beautiful things in action, am I to late to crash the party / am I even welcome with my lack of “lasery imput”?

1. Is there any costs involved with coming along? (Entry fee of sorts?)
2. Ample parking? / Easy to find? ( http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point....m___&encType=1 - Im really bad with directions, I use GPS so if the post code for the venu isnt exactly where the car pack a post code for the car park would be ace)
3. Am I to understand it’s a club fluff owns / deals with that you will be using?

Thanks,

[Jem]

Hi Aidan

I'm sure that all you will need to bring along is your love of lasers and your enthusiasm.

Everyone on this forum appreciates that we all have different budgets, but the one thing that unites us all is an addiction to coherent light and those nice coloured photons

I don't think a monetary fee has been mentioned so far. However, it would perhaps be reasonable to anticipate some sort of small contribution to Fluff's out of pocket expenses that an event such as this may incur.

As it's being held on a Sunday I don't think parking should be too much of a problem. I'm sure Fluff will let us all know the parking arrangements a little nearer the time.

Cheers

Jem

[Jem]

Hi Aidan

I'm sure that all you will need to bring along is your love of lasers and your enthusiasm.

Everyone on this forum appreciates that we all have different budgets, but the one thing that unites us all is an addiction to coherent light and those nice coloured photons

I don't think a monetary fee has been mentioned so far. However, it would perhaps be reasonable to anticipate some sort of small contribution to Fluff's out of pocket expenses that an event such as this may incur.

As it's being held on a Sunday I don't think parking should be too much of a problem. I'm sure Fluff will let us all know the parking arrangements a little nearer the time.

Cheers

Jem

[Aidan]

Ace sounds like a plan.

Would love to see some big lasers in action.

I have been away from the forum for a while, seems to be lots of new people.

Hello to you all!