Surgical Laser Technologies YAG laser

[NobleGas]

A local surplus company has a 'YAG' laser listed, they state it's rated at 100W but not much else. The unit is maked Surgical Laser Technologies and the unit is the resonator and optics mounted on a plate and what looks to be a sheet metal cover. Does anyone know what these units really are? They have a PSU as well which appears to be an arc lamp supply, so I'm guessing the laser is CW.

[danielbriggs]

If it's the model I'm thinking of, they're older-vintage Mid-Late 90's standard medical 1064nm YAGs.
There's two models from memory, one they call the "100", which actually gives EITHER 40W or 60W (depends if you run it off 110V or 220V respectively).
Or the other model is the "220" which actually outputs 100W @ 1064nm.
Both units used either 400µm or 600µm fibre, some uncommon fibres were 800µm.
They are CW, but highly doubt it is suitable for 100% duty cycle as is.

Edit: They also make some Holmium models, so watch out you 100% don't get a 2.1µm model

Show use? Nope.
Other use? Probably good for a laser engraver project if you've a lot of time.

Dan

[NobleGas]

Cheers Dan. It's a good price, wondering if it can be doubled without major effort.

[NobleGas]

Well it's mine now Because I went and collected it and paid cash, he knocked £50 off for the head and power supply, and he also threw in the original bottom half of the cart which has all the cooling system components in it.
Now need to look at the head in a bit more detail to see what's what, but it looks to be in extremely good condition.
It's a 100W unit and is arc lamp pumped, not sure of the lamp size yet, but it's a 3.8kW lamp driver that's with it.
Looking for a nice KTP crystal now

[danielbriggs]

Looking for a nice KTP crystal now

Good work Sir!

@KTP... I'm fairly sure I've still got some new "LSCP KTP's" with or without mounts + oven/TEC's I could sell if of interest to you?
I've also got a suitable special KTP (able to withstand Q-switch level powers) coated for 1319nm + suppressing 1064nm if you fancied making a high power 660nm beast
(I've only ever heard of one similar system; I planned to "convert" an old LSCP green-> red but never found the time to.)
As you'd be finding optics for 1064/532 anyway, it wouldn't hurt too much to get 1319/660 + suppress 1064nm instead Anyway, food for thought!

Dan

[planters]

For doubling, you will need to reach very high fluence levels. An external cavity that contained the KTP would help and allowed a very small spot size might help


Here is a question I have been thinking about. Could you place a Q switch into the CW system? Place an attenuator in the beam path, start the Q switch, then open the attenuator slowly to avoid a giant pulse.

[VDX]

... hmmm ... I have two old (1996) NdYAG marking lasers with 120W and 150W averaged - one still complete, the other partially disassembled, but all loose parts there or reused in other optical setups.

Was thinking about testing with 808nm-pumping ...

Viktor

[planters]

Was thinking about testing with 808nm-pumping ...

I think this would work. One challenge will be the doping level. An arc lamp has only a small percentage of its output at the absorption peak, so of course, in theory, you could get much higher efficiency, but penetration depth and therefore even pumping might suffer. One trick might be to build a hybrid system. What I mean is that you keep the standard arc lamp based pumping chamber, but remove the arc lamp and plug the chamber where the lamp was mounted. Mill a cover for the pump chamber with a window, even acrylic would work. Then flood the chamber with an externally mounted diode stack.

And, here's the trick; detune the stack with temperature to optimize the absorption depth. You do not necessarily want maximum absorption. Let the photons bounce around a bit within the chamber, before absorption, to even out the pumping. The lower heat load will probably also improve the beam characteristics.

[VDX]

... I have a 25W@808nm-diode, what's essentially one of the 19x diode-bars into a housing, where 19 fibers are aligned before every emitter and bundled to a 0.6mm wide output window.

Was thinking to beam the output from the side into the front face, so it can reflect inside the rod and when escaping, then 'bouncing' around in the gold coated pumping chamber to hit the rod from the sides too.

Was hoping to get some of the 'naked' 19x diode-bars for side-pumping (through windows into the pumping chamber) too, but this seems to take a while :-/

Viktor

[NobleGas]

Dan, that sounds interesting; let me know what you manage to dig up please.