UKLEM 3½ Surfleet Lincolnshire - 14th Dec 08

[KevSki]

A few more pics...and the red glow is from the electric heaters , we allowed ourselves the pleasure of ...occassionally!!!!

[p1t8ull]

....and YES that is a laptop in the sink

Well I was running LD 'Basin' with a QM.LOO at the time...

[andy_con]

dont give up ya day job simon!

[andy_con]

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x...nt=Cap0032.flv
http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x...nt=Cap0029.flv
http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x...nt=Cap0026.flv

[allthatwhichis]

Nice pictures though.

[Carl B]

Not to worry, it gave someone else a chance at winning a raffle prize.

I thought you'd have got over that by now soforene.

I believe Kevski was a winner this weekend. I will be at the next meet for sure so your going to be up against my super lucky streak again.

Carl

[Banthai]

sorry could not help it ....

[soforene]

I thought you'd have got over that by now soforene.

Never forget. Never forgive.

[stanwax]

Anyone in attendance at Surfleet will know I had my 556 yellow dpss Kevs red diode and my 'spare' blue firing at a diffraction grating. The blue was a bit on the low side all day and I managed to see a max of 40mW out of it. Considering I bought it as a 50mW laser and taking the cold into consideration thats not bad. However that laser has been tweaked up and will do a solid 100mW so 40mW was poor. Testing it at home revealed it was still low so I begun investigations. It turns out the TEC for the diode is not getting any power due to its control op-amp not being very well. (see first pic). So with that replaced and all caution thrown to the wind I opened the baby up and have done some re-alignment inside and now turning the diode current up to 2.15A and making some adjutments to the TEC levels I am getting a solid 145mW peak I have measured is 157mW. Not bad for a 50mW laser and I bet i could squeeze a little more out if I tried. See second image of the laser running with the top open. (yes the OC & end plate are held in place with Blu-Tac!)
This laser will now be going into my RGB to give it some more ooompf (or as the French say Va Va Voom). It strikes me as lucky I was running it in such cold conditions in this state as the diode would have continued to get hot and may well have flaked out. I am however a little concerned as to how the op-amp died so catastrophically - I have to assume this would not happen in normal use and that something shorted it out somehow - no eveidence was there to support this.

Rob

[stanwax]

And here are a few pix of my 500mW green projector launching into the sky and terminating on the low cloud. Im not sure why but the last image reminded Jim that he had forgotten to bring his Jacobs ladder. Also in the last image you can clearly see the layers of cloud bieng penetrated by the laser (Banthai - dont start )

Rob