Announcing: "The ol' fart's hey days"
In the Radiator thread I had stated:
I'd sure like laserist to elaborate more on this, but my first look at a Laserium projector astounded and impressed me in that it was made from a 19" relay rack enclosure, not sure if it was a standard 42U rack, but it shed light (no pun intended) on the notion of vertically mounting the laser or at an angle slightly tilted. They used Spectra Physics 165 Krypton ion lasers if I recall which required 208/240 3 phase power and a 30 circuit breaker. Their vertical projector racks were a great idea to minimize the laser projector's foot print. I was always concerned about "no seeums" falling on the lower mirror reflector over time. Even though the mirrors were covered, stuff seemed to find its way in, especially turning cleanings.
I started out with a Coherent Radiation CR-MG (mixed gas, krypton/argon) which had about the same output power. Both required 208/240 volt 3-phase at 30 amps max.. This meant their power cables had to be 8/4 (8 gauge stranded wire/ 4 conductor). Hubble twist-lock connectors were our standard. (We used 6/4 cables for the Spectra 171 5 watt Krypton or 20 watt Argon lasers). The travel cases that carried the pigtails and power cable runs were extremely heavy.
Water pressure levels for cooling these ion lasers were critical, as the water cooled lasers had water flow/pressure cutout switches in their power supplies so that if insufficient water pressure and flow occurred the laser power supply would switch itself off. This was not something you wanted happening during a show, any kind of show. Therefore, also included in our standard "equipment load-out" were 110vac, water pressure boost pumps with 40 PSI regulators on their outputs. We used heavy duty garden type hoses for water runs, which could be as long as 150 ft. for the supply and drain hoses, each.
Water and power travel cases made up the bulk of cases with their numbers being 4-5, depending on the venue. Site surveys of each venue, in advance, helped determine where the stadium or auditorium power disconnects could be provided for our pigtail connections and the length of our runs needed to get to the laser projector location. Same for water and drain sources.
(A power pigtail is a 3-6 ft length of 8/4 or 6/4 cable with a Hubble twist-lock connector on one end and bare insulated wire leads about 6-12" long on the other end with about 1" of each lead end stripped back to the stranded copper. The stripped back ends would tie-in (connect) to the venues power breaker box lugs or power disconnect box lugs that housed the main circuit breaker for that power run.)
How about it you ol' farts? Add to this for posterity.
Edit: Later I got to thinking (remembering) those who used ion gas lasers for our light sources also had on hand a gallon each of spectral grade Acetone and spectral grade Methanol for cleaning the laser's two Brewster windows and their front and rear mirrors. We carried much smaller squeeze bottles on the road and for everyday use, each filled with these cleaning chemicals, one for the acetone and another for the methanol along with camera lens cleaning tissues used in the process. In my experience, the Spectra Physics 165 and 171 lasers needed far fewer Brewster and mirror cleanings compared to the Coherent Radiation's CR-K and CR-MG, and Laser Ionics 554 MG laser heads.
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Everything depends on everything else