Vintage Soviet Laser

[Eidetic]

Here's a really classy old laser head from the former Soviet Union. It's marked as an OKR-11 he-ne made in March, 1979. A fellow holographer, Valery (Smirholo) in Yaroslavel, Russia posted a smaller plasma tube on Ebay and I bought one. While discussing that, he mentioned this one and I was all over it. He took the tube out for shipment separately by air, and that got to me in about a week. The rest in two boxes took 6 weeks.

It weighs 34 pounds, is 21" long, adjusts in height from 14 to 17" by a large screw post through the base, and the base needs 11" in depth. The 35mm diameter mirrors are missing, and they are sealed (along with big round Brewster windows) by a rubber gasket. The tube is DC excited with a hot cathode. Obviously also missing is a shield around the tube.

Notice the logo in the detail pic. Be great if someone recognized it. The resonator is mounted with tip and tilt adjusters underneath the output end. The rear mirror mount adjusts coarsely with little cams in slots at the ends of those metal fingers, and finely by the rear most adjusters pressing in on the fingers. Amazing.

The tube is held on top of pins that go down through brass sleeves, which are held in place by a spring and adjusted by a screw from underneath and a large chrome tapered head screw, all seen expanded out below.

It cleaned up like a new penny! Well, a soviet industrial penny. Really hard to find old lasers, and those from eastern europe are nearly impossible. There's one other there I have my sights on, but he won't ship it to me because where he lives, they extort after receiving such shipments. Anyway, here it is!

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Dude, kick ass!!! Looks very futuristic...

Anyway, I hope all that mess between the Ukraine and Russia ends VERY soon... I service record labels from BOTH areas, and I would hate to be missing shipments...

[dsli_jon]

Just. So. Awesome. Thing needs to be put into a movie, somehow..

j

[Eidetic]

Until then, here's where it will be:

I'm really happy it's lowest position allows its use with this old Unertl mirror mount. I'm thinking a diode laser module in the rear mirror mount and a period looking lumia generator.

[Eidetic]

I showed this laser to a Russian coworker, and he told me the manufacturer mentioned on it was the Ministry of Electronic Industry. The "OKR" means Optical Quantum Generator, their phrase for "laser".

[mixedgas]

I showed this laser to a Russian coworker, and he told me the manufacturer mentioned on it was the Ministry of Electronic Industry. The "OKR" means Optical Quantum Generator, their phrase for "laser".

Send a pic to "JSC Plasma" sales and see if they recognize it.

Steve

[CountFunkula]

I showed this laser to a Russian coworker, and he told me the manufacturer mentioned on it was the Ministry of Electronic Industry. The "OKR" means Optical Quantum Generator, their phrase for "laser".

The "OKR" is actually "OKG" when transliterated to the latin alphabet. The character that looks like a backwards 7 is a cyrillic "G".

[Eidetic]

I recently found the book "Lasers and Their Prospects" by N. Sobolev, 1974. Inside that, I found a great set of renderings of old Soviet lasers, including the one shown below of this one with its cover. The book was published in January 1974, and I have to believe the illustrations had to be done way before that, so I'm going to move the date of manufacture of this OKG-11 to c1972. The only other information about it is that the output power was 1mW.