Good Day at the SwapFest! (New Lasers)

[300EVIL]

Hi Everyone,

I made an impromptu decision last Friday night to go to a local hamfest after reading Steve Roberts post on how good my local hamfest's were. I looked them up and it turned out their was one on Saturday!

I've been to many hamfest's in the past but not one like this. It was huge! Anyway, I decided at the last minute to pack up a bunch of RF, laser and Tesla gear I don't use/want anymore and head out there.

So, my brother and I got there nice and early to setup. The place was absolutely packed with thousands of people looking to get an "early bird special". People flock when you start unloading your boxes of stuff to see if they can get a steal of a deal.

Most of the gear I had sold within the first hour of being there. It was nice clearing my shelves of old junk that just sat around collecting dust. Ofcourse I couldn't leave there without spending all my profits. It just so happens the heruursciences aka Chris Leubner was there with a bunch of laser gear. Yes, Yes, I have read some of the horror stories some folks have had here dealing with him. I figured I'd take my chances. He seems like a nice guy and very knowledgeable as well. He assured me his equipment was in working condition and offered lots of help to get it up and running if needed. We'll see....

So, we got a long great and traded some of the stuff I had there for some of his stuff. Here's some of the things I picked up.

2 - 10W RF Pumped CO2 lasers with power supply.



2 - Large Coherent 808nm laser diodes. Supposedly, 60W and 160W with a 150A @ 5VDC power supply.



I also picked up a dental X-Ray machine! It works too. I blasted my Geiger counter for a second and it pegged the meter! In a remote and controlled environment ofcourse. I have enough RAD exposure.

[drlava]

Nice haul! I have been wanting one of those RF excited tubes for a while they have a very nice beam and are quite compact for a CO2.

[heroic]

I also picked up a dental X-Ray machine! It works too. I blasted my Geiger counter for a second and it pegged the meter! In a remote and controlled environment ofcourse. I have enough RAD exposure.

You know you can make X-rays of things using Polaroid camera and film, right? What you do is, block the lens off so the camera doesn't expose it, then quickly before the film develops, expose it with the X-ray beam

You can still get Polaroid film and cameras from nice places like unsaleable.com but the cameras are cheap as chips on eBay- though I would avoid the film from ebay, it's all waaaaay too far expired.

Some more details here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/200...xray_radi.html

[300EVIL]

Nice haul! I have been wanting one of those RF excited tubes for a while they have a very nice beam and are quite compact for a CO2.

Thanks Man!
Yeah, their tiny little suckers. Only a little over 1 foot long. Supposedly they output good plwer for their size, like 8-12 Watts! I've messed with RF tuning before but I'm still a little unsure of how to properly implement the PS. Supposedly the big board is just a 2W or so 27MHz generator with modulation and the large HF MOSFET is the amplifier for powering the tube.

80+ Watts of 27MHz = Mega Hurts! Hope I don't get hit with that while tinkering. Gonna have to dig up my nylon coil tuning sticks.

If anyone has any info on setting these up, it would be greatly appreciated.

You know you can make X-rays of things using Polaroid camera and film, right? What you do is, block the lens off so the camera doesn't expose it, then quickly before the film develops, expose it with the X-ray beam

You can still get Polaroid film and cameras from nice places like unsaleable.com but the cameras are cheap as chips on eBay- though I would avoid the film from ebay, it's all waaaaay too far expired.

Some more details here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/200...xray_radi.html

Thanks for the info man. I bought this X-Ray head for this exact purpose. I want to take photographs. I'm not big on rushing though so I'm probably gonna develop the Polaroid film post exposure. I'm all about safety when it comes to radiation. I was thinking I can run exposed film through cold laminator rollers in a dark room to activate the developing. I'm also interested in setting up a dark room so I can take larger pictures and develop them myself, Poloroid's are just not big enough sometimes. Any helpful info here would be greatly appreciated.

I'm also going to build a box for this X-Ray head with a remote control box. It will set exposure times and make it safe(er) to operate. I don't want to expose myself or anyone else to a dangerous enviroment.

Thanks Again!
Adam

[heroic]

Thanks for the info man. I bought this X-Ray head for this exact purpose. I want to take photographs. I'm not big on rushing though so I'm probably gonna develop the Polaroid film post exposure. I'm all about safety when it comes to radiation. I was thinking I can run exposed film through cold laminator rollers in a dark room to activate the developing. I'm also interested in setting up a dark room so I can take larger pictures and develop them myself, Poloroid's are just not big enough sometimes. Any helpful info here would be greatly appreciated.

I'm also going to build a box for this X-Ray head with a remote control box. It will set exposure times and make it safe(er) to operate. I don't want to expose myself or anyone else to a dangerous enviroment.

That sounds very wise. The way I would do it, then, is to buy an old Polaroid camera and take it apart- you can get just the film rollers and ejector motor. The rollers are quite specialized (they have to turn at a specific speed, and they are an exact distance apart) so I would just buy an old ProCam or something like that and hack it apart to get the mechanics.

It would be totally awesome if you could turn it into a completely automatic X-ray Polaroid


As for larger formats, well, the Polaroid I shoot is not the 600 format consumer film but the much larger Image/Spectra film, which is about four inches square. If you want to go bigger than that, you will need to do the developing yourself. You can still buy photographic paper by the sheet in sizes that are much larger than film- this is what people use to do prints on- up to 8x10 easily, and more as a special order. Any decent pro photo store will hook you up. Then you want to make a film holder- you might use opaque black plastic for this, obviously metal is not win in this situation- and arrange so that you can take the film out in the darkroom with no light at all. If you use some of the older non-pan B&W paper- you can still find it out there- then you can use a red or green safelight in your darkroom.

The problem with using photo paper rather than film is that it is much, much less sensitive than film, and this carries through to its X-ray response- you might have to experiment a little.

Any decent pro-photo store will fill you in on the details, my recommendation is to find a local one and go chat with the guys there. A lot of them are chemical process fans and will go out of their way to help you doing anything a little unusual! I don't know where in the world you are, but one which helped me a lot when I was in London was the Downtown Darkroom, those guys are great!

[drlava]

As for x-rays you can use a polariod and a roll of scotch tape!
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/1...tape-xray.html

[FourDee]

I've always wondered what the use of those big IR diodes was.

Are they suitable as pump sources?

[mixedgas]

Nice haul! I have been wanting one of those RF excited tubes for a while they have a very nice beam and are quite compact for a CO2.

I've got one setting here :-)

Steve

[mixedgas]

I've always wondered what the use of those big IR diodes was.

Are they suitable as pump sources?

platemarkers for newspapers. And usually they are at 830, so no, but a few are at 808.
Steve

[300EVIL]

That sounds very wise. The way I would do it, then, is to buy an old Polaroid camera and take it apart- you can get just the film rollers and ejector motor. The rollers are quite specialized (they have to turn at a specific speed, and they are an exact distance apart) so I would just buy an old ProCam or something like that and hack it apart to get the mechanics.

It would be totally awesome if you could turn it into a completely automatic X-ray Polaroid


As for larger formats, well, the Polaroid I shoot is not the 600 format consumer film but the much larger Image/Spectra film, which is about four inches square. If you want to go bigger than that, you will need to do the developing yourself. You can still buy photographic paper by the sheet in sizes that are much larger than film- this is what people use to do prints on- up to 8x10 easily, and more as a special order. Any decent pro photo store will hook you up. Then you want to make a film holder- you might use opaque black plastic for this, obviously metal is not win in this situation- and arrange so that you can take the film out in the darkroom with no light at all. If you use some of the older non-pan B&W paper- you can still find it out there- then you can use a red or green safelight in your darkroom.

The problem with using photo paper rather than film is that it is much, much less sensitive than film, and this carries through to its X-ray response- you might have to experiment a little.

Any decent pro-photo store will fill you in on the details, my recommendation is to find a local one and go chat with the guys there. A lot of them are chemical process fans and will go out of their way to help you doing anything a little unusual! I don't know where in the world you are, but one which helped me a lot when I was in London was the Downtown Darkroom, those guys are great!

Thanks again!
I never knew the speed and the pressure of the rollers made that much of a difference but I guess that makes sense. Yes, I read the Spectra film is larger. I'm gonna go that direction for my first images.

The difference between film and photographic paper makes sense since the medical field uses film. I wonder if longer exposures would solve this problem in my case since I'm using inanimate objects? Ipod, cell phone ect...

I'll definitely make a trip to a local camera store and get some suggestions on getting started. I know of just the place!

As for x-rays you can use a polariod and a roll of scotch tape!
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/1...tape-xray.html

Yeah, I've seen the news article on this when the discovery was made. Stuff like this is totally cool. Once I get a new vacuum pump I'll have to try it. Here's a video of a tape x ray machine in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r63e5y3Z3R8

platemarkers for newspapers. And usually they are at 830, so no, but a few are at 808.
Steve

Thanks for the info Steve.

Anybody here good with Coherent part numbers?

The big diode reads, "M/N 1041178, S/N HP-028, MFD 7-27-04".

The little diode reads, "L-026-W02442, LIM-81-60-36-18.9, 3-26-02".