Remember Yesterday?

[steve-o]

Today 1-2-3 Watts of laser power is so casually talked about, when just a few years ago we were all struggling to achieve 300mW of luxurious blue, green and red? Ions were the main source of blue, and 200mw 660nm diodes were very very expensive .. just thinking about yesterday ..

[edison]

Yeah i remember those days.......Dragging watercooled coherent innova,s to get a few watts and now a 300mm wide projector case is to big for most. Perfect beamquallity and low divergence, all down to the drain since its now only about power and waving beams from left to right. Sometimes i use the search button just for fun to see those nice projects from Solarfire, or SBK with his quad module. Allot of projectors where build too over the years. Damn shame those days are gone mostly. The cheaper china can offer the less amount of own builds you see hear. The last impressive build was Tonyazec with his quad P73 that was awesome.When the casio blue,s came available PL exploded almost. The administrator needed even to stream all the info into a seperate section!!!

Talking about having fun in the low power range i really need to build that small projector sometimes with direct green diodes just for fun!!!

[colouredmirrorball]

Talk about it!
I remember my very first LEM... Francesco had a 2 or 3 W RGB, a very nice unit, everyone was amazed! Now everyone brings two or three >3 W projectors, the usual... It makes for some interesting displays though

[Galvonaut]

I saw a thread on here somewhere showing what lasers look like with and without LED curtains on stage (might have been posted by Stanwax?). It's a good thing that laser power had increased to compensate for the thousands of lumen of light from other sources.

I imagine people's exposure to other sources of bright light in their day-to-day lives would make lower power lasers less impressive too. iPhones, TVs and computer screens now throw out massive amounts of light at high contrast ratios.

Well, that's my excuse for wanting 3 Watts anyway!

[edison]

Yes that has changed too over the years. Lasers are now being used as extra special effect. I call it beamwavers. (waving beams over and into the audience). The problem is that with the multimodes the beamquality went down and so now you have 3W RGB with a choice for the red between multimode and single mode. A few years ago you didn,t have that choice. Most people look only at power/money value. Second, people have the choice between 650nm and 637 (638) and they don,t understand it or don,t want to listen. Power that is what people want and china can now deliver a shitload of power for nothing. All the parts are cheap and labour is also cheap so the price have dropped massively. The quallity went with it, cheap powersupplies, not EN60825 complient etc.Sure its now splitlevel design but that is bassically it. It works for a year and then it gets issues. Then when warrenty is of and it needs repair it cost a shitload of money (especcially when green is dead) if you can,t repair it yourself.
In the old days people build there own Projectors with parts from Stanwax and the quality was good but now the trend is buy from china, play with it and then it goes on ebay or the Attic. When the Green diodes will arrive in multimode highpower the price will drop even more so then BIY (building it yourself) becomes a totally waste of time and money. You see also a shift in the demand of Event organisers. Mccarrot explained it very clearly to me that Event organisers (don,t know a better word for it) demand more power eventhought they don,t need it. You can try to explain that a 2 watt /0.65 mrd looks as bright as a 3 watt/1.3 mrd but they are convinced that they are right. In the old days the boy next door didn,t have a 3 watt projector and now that seems the standard. I believe in supertight beams that gives that Magic back like you had with the Coherent innova,s and other Krypton tubes. I,m concidering to do supertight lower powered (1.5 watt) projector with Eyemagics and direct greens just for fun. The green would be an 8 combiner only so about 400mw. A while ago someone had a 50mw/HENE for sale, i was really tempted to buy it since the beamquality is awesome and i could only afford 2mw in the eighties. 50mw of 633 damn that is nice.

As for shows i hope that the creativity comes back like we used to have seen and that they will be presented in total darkness. That i think is still the most awesome to see, total darkness and with an awesome piece of music to make things complete.

[Steve Milani]

Oh yeah!
I well remember "yesterday".....

I spent more than € 500 (currency of today) buying this He-Ne gas tube.....
It's still fully working... >75mw @ 632,8nm

[Eidetic]

Who made that He-Ne? What year?

[Steve Milani]

http://spectral.it/hene_laser.html

I bought my He-Ne in 1998 directly from farm...
It's RMM505L model.
As I told, it's fully working.

[steve-o]

Nice 75 mW'er there Steve!
I've got a Melles Griot He-Ne 632.8 (bare tube) that runs about 7 mW iirc also from the 1990s era. The old power supply (built from a kit) is gone. I need to find a replacement for it , probably a "brick" type psu. I think Meredith sells them. Gotta get one soon so I can fire it up and see that wonderful gas glow again

[Steve Milani]

Yep!
It is a nice gas laser, even if it is an old model.
More pics about it and its beam..