Chances of ancient argon lasers working?

[mixedgas]

Call the Smithsonian, tell them you think you have the second commercial ion laser off the production line ran by the inventor of the ion laser. That head is Serial number 0002.

I'm not joking. There were only a handful of those made.

You have a duty to get that into a museum.

I doubt it will run,its more valuable as what it is, as is, then as a working laser. The variac based power supply will NOT run a modern tube.

The design lifetime was 500 hours, at 365 its kaput.

Steve

[mophead]

That's really cool. Thanks for taking the time to share the pics.

[300EVIL]

"It belongs in a museum!"



Exclaims Steve Roberts playing Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Argon"

Don't attempt to power that sucker up! Bad things may happen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DGF5UYBox0



(Soforene Photoshop magic needed....)

[mixedgas]

I was scared he'd mention the Arc of the Inconvenient Plasma next.....

Jeeze...., why me......

Bridges second paper listed 119 lines in Xe, Ar, KR, and Ne. He also got a blue from Hg, then all heck broke loose as everybody rammed anything down a tube they could, at tremendous energies, both CW and Pulsed. Oxygen, Chlorine, Iodine, Bromine, Lead, Indium. The list goes on and on. many of them worked.

He is the hero, not me...

And its still the only cost effective way to get more then 100-200 mW of blue.

Steve

[heruursciences]

The supergraphite laser is most likely dead. The other one if you got a glow with a hene psu, and the glow was that purdy purplely argon color, not the sickly dim bluish nitrogen glow- access to 3 phase power, and a BEEFY 3 phase variac- you may be lucky...

Good luck, may the force be with you...

[MarioMaster]

The hughes PSU says 120v, and there are only two power input terminals + ground, so I don't think it's 3 phase.

The coherent is 240v single phase as well