ALC68 strip down & clean - Help please

[smogthemog]

A few more pictures of today's re-build. I am replacing as many of the American threaded nuts and bolts with metric ones so making it easy to take apart in future.
I am also completely sealing the 2 (red) air plenum chambers, that remove the hot air away from the middle 2 mag coils (and the other 2 as well ), as before they leaked air badly thus not creating a good air flow through the tube cooling fins.

[p1t8ull]

This thread should be re-named "Pimp my ALC"

Looking good Jim

[QUAZAR]

This thread should be re-named "Pimp my ALC"

Looking good Jim

Agreed, definitely the most colourful 68 I have ever seen.

[James Lehman]

Cool!

That blue thing looks like its anodized. Is it?

James.

[chad]

I can't remember is that L part of the laser is aluminum or steel? If it is steel be sure to at least clear coat it otherwise it will rust in a second after bead blasting. Not a bad thing to do to aluminum also.

Chad

[smogthemog]

All the surfaces are painted. The silver finish is Zinc Oxide spray.

The blue air plenum is blue metal flake paint - it's what I had lying around in the workshop

The sub contract bead blasting turned out a little coarse, and he had it set to very low pressure to minimise distortion, for what I would have ideally liked it to have been so I have purchased my own blaster now, to do the PSU after the head is finished and tested, with a bag of fine grade grit.

I plan on getting the tube re-fitted today and the 4x end plates in.

[smogthemog]

More pictures from today's build up:

[stanwax]

Fantastic work Jim. I bet it didnt look that good from new.
Cant wait to see it running

Rob

[rMuD]

WOW! is all I can say.. I've never seen anyone have the balls to tear down a laser that far, change all the parameters to aligning that tube (painting, welding, etc) not labeling the optics or the rods..

I assume the paint your using is meant for High Tempertures, as it's going to get really really really hot in there.

The Fan you are using are way to small.. your going to need over 1000CFM to keep that running at 25-30amps and/or the 30-60 seconds at 40amps to see 1+ Watt.

2 in and 2 out and 2x the size of the holes. (fan sizes Patroit and Major) come to mind if you want to run it at 300-500mw nominal

Remember this is a equivilent to a Water Cooled Mid-frame requiring 3-5 Gallons per minute of water cooling. They were not designed to run at power for more than a few seconds.

It is not White Lightable, the bore is too small, and you could not pump enough power down that tube to make it worth your time before it over heated.

[QUAZAR]

Using twin Papst fans as blowers and a centrifugal fan for the exhaust, I used to run mine at 1W for 8-10 hours at a time without any problems