New School VS. Old School

[MechEng3]

So many hobbies....so little $ for them all. The big gassers are truely a work of mad art...science...and inert gasses with high voltage. I love them....just can't see feeding and maintaining one on a limited hobby budget.This one is a small laser of mine. I have reached the monetary cap of the lasers for me...Avgas is $3.67/Gallon for 80LL. I enjoy flying every minute I get to fly. Now I purchase things like swagging tools,bucking bars,pinking shears and hopefully a dynamic prop balancer. Also have my eyes on some really nice LCD moving map GPS systems. Some help here Ray? Steve you know where I am coming from.

[heroic]

We didnt call them portable...we called them LUGABALE

1960s definition of portable: it has wheels.
1970s definition of portable: it has a handle.
1980s definition of portable: it is smaller than a suitcase.
1990s definition of portable: it has a battery.
2000s definition of portable: danger, choking hazard.

[Laser Zone]

Thats what pisses me off about kids and there 100 + mw pens , Most dont know and never seen a large or mid frame argon. They dont know that 35mw green dpss coast years back 1500.00. I believe they dont realize the history and different kinds of cool lasers out there. I thought Id never be able to own a mid frame argon laser 18 years ago due to there coast . As long as argons are around i will always own one.

how can anybody resist these !!

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...&pictureid=828

[mixedgas]

The only reason you dont see 60 watt ions is the possible use in purifying uranium, so they are banned by ITAR. At a point there is a crossover where ION is still cheaper to run then a green yag at a point just above 30 watts. It is also still the only cost effective method for single laser high quality beam blue with real coherence above a watt or so,

The fact that there are 4 companies in the world still making a 30 watt ion means they are gonna be around a while. Sp, Coherent, Cambridge and Plasma in Russia have no plans to discontinue them any time soon, because of semiconductor processing and CD mastering markets. Add to that 5 or more companies that still rebuild them. Heck, there is one company that still refurbs henes in bulk.

The hene market is a fraction of its former self, but still steady. Nothing solid state comes close to the m^2 of a hene or the frequency stability. And go price a cobalt or a novalux 488 blue, they are still priced exactly at the price point,if not higher, of a air cooled laser of the same power.


Henes also define the standards of measurment and machining in much of the world.
M squared is a beam quality measure , and gas rules there.

Excimer is actually stronger then ever because of lasik and semiconductor.

Co2 is unbeatable for the cost , although yag fiber is starting to make gains for machining. Heck, recently Co2 is almost following Moore's law.

At any given time there are about 4 SP164s or 165s on ebay, and Cambridge is still cranking them out and 3 other companies still make or rebuild the tubes.

I can not go into details, but there is a IR handheld gas being developed for less then lethal weapons. something like 1 megawatt peak in a few picoseconds. It stings you like a electric shock.

Gas is dead, huh? Gas is what paid for the development of solid state.

I mean come on, Kimmon and Melles are still making HECADS, which amazes me.

Steve

[mixedgas]

A reliant 300 WC with modern galvos is only about 15% bigger then your box, mecheng and came with 3 more colors. One could also argue that it outlasts most solid state blues I've seen, which seem to do 10 to 200 hours and croak.

Too bad Laser Physics started screwing up their business model and killed themselves off.

Steve

[mixedgas]

Mech Eng has a point, Its airplanes, beautiful women, and lasers in that order. If it comes down to flight or lasing, I'm talking flight. Even if all I get is bootleg hours and am never allowed to learn to land ( some silly health rules, that let 90 year old geezers have a license and I have to struggle to get a temporary IIIrd class medical)

Steve

[Laser Zone]

Steve did you get your supply ?

[keeperx]

well i must say this has been a good discussion..
i love the fact that in 1 day we did 7 pages of discussion.

i know there are variegated opinions on this matter which is why I posted this to begin with..

if i cant be a sarcastic asshole all the time, im at least gonna do my best to get you guys "discussing".. i love a good difference of opinion.. you learn so much when passionate people take a stand for what the believe in...

[Laserman532]

well i must say this has been a good discussion..
i love the fact that in 1 day we did 7 pages of discussion.

i know there are variegated opinions on this matter which is why I posted this to begin with..

if i cant be a sarcastic asshole all the time, im at least gonna do my best to get you guys "discussing".. i love a good difference of opinion.. you learn so much when passionate people take a stand for what the believe in...

and 4 of the pages are just me!!!!!

[Lasernerd]

well i must say this has been a good discussion..
i love the fact that in 1 day we did 7 pages of discussion.

i know there are variegated opinions on this matter which is why I posted this to begin with..

if i cant be a sarcastic asshole all the time, im at least gonna do my best to get you guys "discussing".. i love a good difference of opinion.. you learn so much when passionate people take a stand for what the believe in...

7 pages? I see 5