what was the first/best laser you had operated of had fun with?

[absolom7691]

Not exactly my first but it was my first "serious" laser. I got the head and optics from MWK when I worked there. The plasma tube was bought from a guy at an electronics swap-meet. He had a bunch of large printer parts and an AL60x plasma tube, which he had no idea what it was. For $30 , I had a tube for my laser cavity, no idea if it worked or not. I got an old 29AN12 PSU from Jim McDaniels at LSD laser with a bad duty cycle chip (T.I. 4422 I think). I sent it to Gary Stadler to repair and $100 later, I was tuning my first argon! At the time of this picture, I had it putting out around 80mW. After walking the optics (and cleaning the brewster windows!), it topped out at 142mW @ 9A. Multi-line, 60cm MM optics. Awesome laser. I miss it.

[hitekvoop]

Perhaps I'll do a combination Swami/Eidetic visit in the somewhat near future.

[swamidog]

Perhaps I'll do a combination Swami/Eidetic visit in the somewhat near future.

yup... laser wizardry and spitzstp are also in the area. we could have a mini-lem and lattes.

[Draco]

I miss MWK Industries, i still have a few of there catalogs in a file cabinet, i bought my first and second HeNe lasers from them, a friend at the time entertained a person there by calling tem00 T Moo, like a cow lol

[digiassn]

I miss my old air cooled American Lasers argon that was combined with a little Melles Griot HeNe that I used to have in my shop for programming. I always thought it was funny that these little, cheap lasers (at the time) were being used with an 8 channel NEOS and a set of CT 6800's. The scanner setup was worth about 10x more than the lasers =D

[lasermaster1977]

I gotta say without question, I've had fun with every laser I ever had. The first laser I got to play with for a few years beginning around late '75 was a .5mW Spectra Physics HeNe followed soon by a .5mW Coherent HeNe (that actually was a 1-3mW after the graded neutral density filter was removed). I still have the Coherent and it still lases (just barely). And there is no anxiety higher than trying to troubleshoot a transistor pass-bank in the exciter of a water-cooled laser or to get the brewster windows polished up to restore lost optical output power, just before showtime.

My first outdoor beam-bounce was with a 2W mixed-gas Coherent off the surface of a small lake, during a foggy winter evening behind the planetarium.




The best lasers so far are the RGB LD's I'm playing with today. Best beam for the buck. Like photonbeam said, compared to dragging around hundreds of feet heavy duty water hoses and 3-phase 8 and 6 gauge 4-conductor power cable, water pumps and filters, 240/440vac step-up/down transformers, etc., and huge ion gas lasers....LD's and DPSS's are a godsend.

[steve-o]

Cool pic lasermaster! My favorite memory was buying a Lasos 9mw 488nm argon tube from Mike at MWK somewhere around 1990. This was pre- internet (for me, anyway) so lots of phone calls. I bought the bare tube and asked Mike what it took to run it. He said about 90VDC/9-10A and 1.2VAC at 20-something amps for the filament. After finding out which was the cathode it was off to designing that power supply. Using a bug-zapper transformer to trigger it, there was finally a real purty blue beam! Good times. I still have it

[masterpj]

If you don't count useless weak red laser pointers: My first laser was a 2nd hand laser I bought from LaserExtreme it had 650nm red and 473nm blue and 532nm green.. It still runs and the scanners still work well despite being pushed hard and used frequently.. only have had to replace the 650nm diodes once and adjust the 473nm driver.

Best is the coherent innova 70c star II by a mile

[dnar]

I started with pointer modules and quickly progressed to orthogonal steppers using cut hard disk platters as mirrors under Arduino control.



Before I knew it I amam a licensed Laser Safety Officer with 3 registered ILDA projectors, Pangolin and a control surface with regular show bookings.

An insidious disease.