This is why I love IONs

[DZ]

I recently received an email from someone looking to unload an old argon laser. After a few emails back and forth the trip was set. I travelled about 1700 miles to pickup an argon laser that I've not seen from a guy I've not met. It was absolutely well worth the trip and what I ended up with was a Lexel 85 argon laser.

Here's the story, the laser was used at a university where this guy works, it was sitting on a shelf to be discarded. He picked it up, took it home and found that the tube would light, but he could never get it to lase. So it ended up in his shed for around 6 years before I came along.

When I picked it up, I noticed it was filthy, it really looks like it was underwater at some point! I pulled out the OC to see the condition, at first I couldn't even see thru it as some bugs seemed to have made it thier home! I was surprised to find that the HR included a prism assembly for single line operation, very cool but it needs to go.

As soon as I got home I connected everything up to see if it would work, I discovered the plumbing was completely clogged! Took a while to get the lines clear. The laser fired right up but of course, no beam. I opened it up to discover several of the reentrant leaf springs on the HR side were broke. So I HeNe aligned the OC, picked up a few spare leaf springs and a multiline HR mount and spent the last several hours getting this thing aligned. Took forever, but finally seeing that flash of coherent light was very exciting! Once I get a fresh new set of optics in the next couple days I should see well over 1W out of this guy, with beam specs of 1.1mm by 0.7mRad.

Here's the kicker of the whole story and why I love IONs, I looked on the bottom of the head to find that this thing was manufactured in April of 1977, amazingly that's when I was born...

That said, I can't imagine that this is the orignal tube. In fact, the tube serial number is different than the serial number on the bottom of the head so I'm certain it's been replaced at least once. And the best part, the hour meter appears to be just shy of 350 hours.

IONs Rock!

YouTube - 36 year old Lexel 85 comes to life

[dnar]

Nice. Please don't show vids of hands (or any exposed body part) interrupting the beam, no matter how brief. We should set a good example here.... ;o)

1977 hey? You be just a whipper snapper then!

I just thought of a great laser safety sign/badge...

"If your not willing to place your willy in the beam path, then any other body part or sensory organ should also not enter the beam path."

[Eidetic]

Bravo, Bravo!!!!!

If there's anything better than an ion laser, it's a freakin' OLD ion laser.

[steve-o]

Very nice Dave! Kudos on resurrecting a beautiful piece of art that might have otherwise met with an untimely demise in a landfill ..

[ImageLight]

Yey, its alive!!! Glad the trip wasn't in vain...

[Photonbeam]

Congratulations DZ - nice score! By the time 532nm yags came along everyone was getting tired of the color of all-lines argon used in laser shows throughout the '70's and '80's. Now that we're getting tired of 532nm the all-lines argon with 488.8nm and 514.5nm looks really nice again. The small diameter, low divergence ion laser beam is a beautiful thing!

[VibrationsOfDoom]

BEAUTIFUL laser... Looked like there was some green in there, is that a camera glitch?

[DZ]

[QUOTE=dnar;275212]Please don't show vids of hands (or any exposed body part) interrupting the beam, no matter how brief. We should set a good example here.... ;o)

[QUOTE]

But that's how I measure power!

Looked like there was some green in there,

Yeah there's green in there. In fact, just put in a new set of optics and I'm getting 6 lines now, 514nm all the way down to 457nm.

[steve-o]

But that's how I measure power!

Yep if it stings in 1/10 of a second or so it's a couple of watts at least .. it's called a calibrated hand-meter .. lol .. let the flaming begin ..

.. (laser noobs please disregard the above statement) ..

[dnar]

Yep if it stings in 1/10 of a second or so it's a couple of watts at least .. it's called a calibrated hand-meter .. lol .. let the flaming begin ..

.. (laser noobs please disregard the above statement) ..

I throw ANSI Z136 and IEC 60825 in your general direction and remind all readers that your should NOT expose any part of your body, especially your eyes to such beams...

Let me check, yep, I am still at PL.....