Antique Lasers?
Bob H
interested in buying lasers and laser equipment from that time.
Anything made by Hughes Aircraft company, Trion or Lear Siegler,
Raytheon, Maser Optics, or Optics Technology. Also looking for some
of that very old mounting hardware, like the triangular Ealing rails
and associated carriers, lens holders, and translators.
Thanks!
DougD
Well, I had this big brute of a RCA Argon 1 watt made literlly out of cast
iron! It was made in late 1968, I bought it used second hand from Honeywell
Minneapolis in about 1981, kept it around until about 1986, sold it to a guy
on the island here and as far as I know, he still has it in his basement along
with a couple of nuclear reactors... (he was a sub nuke mechanic, I hope
he was kidding about the reactors..)
It could probably be purchased, but you'd need a forklift to get it moved!!
Oh, and it had this incredible Buck Rogers look to it! Looks like it was
the model for every "ray gun" ever drawn in a comic! I may still have a
copy of the manual for it here somewhere.
d.
Lostgallifreyan
news:tJmdndAnYLjYc4bW...@supernews.com:
> ...a guy
> on the island here and as far as I know, he still has it in his basement
> along with a couple of nuclear reactors... (he was a sub nuke mechanic,
> I hope he was kidding about the reactors..)
And a monorail? Got to be a monorail there somewhere, it's traditional. :)
And a private army of techs in red jumpsuits.. And a white cat, no doubt?
RLL
Apollo Lasers in the 1980s. I did some work on the first production
rangefinder used in the M60A3 tank. It used a spinning Q switch -- really
quite an amazing combination of mechanical and electro-optical phenomena.
I also spent some time with Apollo Lasers, a commercial and scientific laser
company that was eventually purchased by Allied and subsequently closed
after Alexandrite failed to generate the interest that Allied had hoped. I
worked as an applications engineer in the days where people believed lasers
were capable of far more than physics would permit.
I someday plan to write a book ...
Regards,
- Russ in Santa Barbara
"Bob H" <bobh...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:656da0ef-0780-4311...@2g2000prl.googlegroups.com...
DougD
I'd put nothing beyond this guy, he's about the only other person who I
know that has more "stuff" in his house than me! Actually, he has a
couple of warehouses, including one that has a couple of out of biz
movie theaters sitting in it, lock, stock, and popcorn/projectors
and seats!
Actually, I take that back, until you've visited the "House on the Rock",
you have no idea as to what extents a real collector will go, absolutely
stunning amount of "Stuff"...
d.
John Sutter
finder probably from about '68 that I haven't found any
information on yet (I have not poked around lately).
I think it has a NdYag rod in it and uses a spinning reflector.
It has been years since I opened it up. I did try to fire it up
but I don't think the tube flashed though the mirror did spin up.
I picked it up about 20 years ago at a base auction.
-- John
John Sutter
http://www.sutters.com/RangeFinder/
James Sweet
That's an interesting looking toy. Did you check to see if you've got
voltage on the storage capacitor? Flash lamps are pretty simple systems.
John Sutter
>
> That's an interesting looking toy. Did you check to see if you've got
> voltage on the storage capacitor? Flash lamps are pretty simple systems.
I don't think I got that far with it. I think I got distracted by some
new big mirrors coming in for my holography setup and that pretty much
stopped that. Well, at least for a few decades. It would be fun to
get it going.
-- John
Bob H
to fit easily on a display case shelf. That's important when
collecting laser equipment.
geso
2 of them use a 2" arc lamp and are q-switched. I think their model
is KY-2. I have another that uses halogen lamps, and is also q-
switched. They all have that familiar blue paint that was popular with
Korad, Control Laser, Aerotech, etc...
Lostgallifreyan
9c2f99...@j14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
> I have another that uses halogen lamps, and is also q-switched.
Any more to this? I think this has probably come up and been answered before,
but it's interesting because most times anyone asks if you can make a laser
with halogen lamps, pshaws and poopoos and more modern epithets start flying
around like solid lumps, yet you seem to have an actual laser that says that
it works. I guess it might not without the q-switch, but I really don't know.
Somehow the idea that a dirt-cheap halogen lamp tube is enough to pump a
laser is a very attractive idea, so how does it work?
geso
I have 3 other halogen pumped lasers made by CVI. Two use dual
halogen lamps and one uses a single lamp.
One of the dual lamp ones does >2 watts cw! I have another that when
I bought it, the fellow who sold it to me said
they used to melt holes through nickels with it. That one is q-
switched. Want pics?
Fleetie
Yes, please!!!
Lostgallifreyan
b04098...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
> Want pics?
>
Yes please :) I like the idea because possibly a laser based on halogen lamps
might be one of the easiest to build and get parts for.
Lostgallifreyan
b04098...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
> Let em hoo and haw because I can tell you it does work :)
>
Certainly looks like others think so too. Either the European Space Agency
has taken leave of its wits or they know something several laser experts
don't.
http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/POW/ACT-RPT-NRG-0412-
SPS_EcoFys_FinalReport.PDF
(X-news, I spit upon thy wordwrap).
Apparently ESA have, or had, a proposal for an Ariane-4 launch of a space
based power generation system that includes a decription of a 'monolithic
halogen pumped slab laser', solar powered, taking in 11 KW and outputting 1
KW. I guess they'd need several, though I think that was just a test
version, nearby they cite multi-GW plans... I don't know what those figures
come from but a claim of close to 10% efficiency from a halogen pumped laser
is a curious one. The presentation seems as vague as the science in James
Bond at times but it is hosted on the ESA's own site and they have
demonstrated actual spacefaring capability well enough so I can't assume
they're wrong about this.
Samuel M. Goldwasser
Every few years these same proposals are regurgitated. The cost alone of
putting megatons of stuff into Earth orbit makes them the stuff of
science fiction, let alone an impossible laser technology.
--
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Lostgallifreyan
news:uy6l70...@repairfaq.org:
> Lostgallifreyan <no-...@nowhere.net> writes:
>
>> geso <gso...@gmail.com> wrote in news:38d0e559-513f-4c8d-a4d6-
>> b04098...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> > Let em hoo and haw because I can tell you it does work :)
>> >
>>
>> Certainly looks like others think so too. Either the European Space
>> Agency has taken leave of its wits or they know something several laser
>> experts don't.
>>
>> http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/POW/ACT-RPT-NRG-0412-
>> SPS_EcoFys_FinalReport.PDF
>>
>> (X-news, I spit upon thy wordwrap).
>>
>> Apparently ESA have, or had, a proposal for an Ariane-4 launch of a
>> space based power generation system that includes a decription of a
>> 'monolithic halogen pumped slab laser', solar powered, taking in 11 KW
>> and outputting 1 KW. I guess they'd need several, though I think that
>> was just a test version, nearby they cite multi-GW plans... I don't
>> know what those figures come from but a claim of close to 10%
>> efficiency from a halogen pumped laser is a curious one. The
>> presentation seems as vague as the science in James Bond at times but
>> it is hosted on the ESA's own site and they have demonstrated actual
>> spacefaring capability well enough so I can't assume they're wrong
>> about this.
>
> Every few years these same proposals are regurgitated. The cost alone
> of putting megatons of stuff into Earth orbit makes them the stuff of
> science fiction, let alone an impossible laser technology.
>
Well, I thought it lookd a bit James Bond-ish, but that begs the question of
why an official space agency persists in it. They're not in a poker game with
a need to bluff, so it looks weird them doing that. Then again, the BBC is no
stranger to trotting out the same old stories about science with NEW flagged
all over them so maybe people just forget a lot more then they think they do.
Samuel M. Goldwasser
Someone once emailed me in all seriousness asking a laser recommendation.
What he wanted to do was use the Sun to power a laser to produce
a beam to be used to drive a thermal (e.g., steam) generator. He had
heard about the virtues of coherent light and figured this would be more
efficient than using the Sun directly Sounds like he got the space agency
interested... :)
Lostgallifreyan
Yeah, I was kind of wondering why they didn't just plan a large area mylar
mirror. Far more efficient. Even 'James Bond science' didn't lose that
point... Clearly the ESA near a reality check on basic physics and
efficiency!
All that aside, I Googgled for further references to halogen pumped lasers,
and I found someone claiming 2 or 3 watts from a 0.6% Nd doped YAG rod driven
by two 500W lamps. They actually said 2 500 but I don't think they meant
2,500, that would be a very nonstandard rating for a single lamp.. So never
mind ESA's claim of around 10%, even these lesser claims seem to exceed gas
laser efficiencies, and from a much cheaper and simpler system. So what went
wrong? People change projector lamps every few tens or hundreds of hours, and
for a cheap effective laser than can safely be plugged into any mains socket
that kind of inconvenience would be a small price to pay. And never mind
water cooling, forced air would be enough, halogen lamps are meant to run
hut, that's how the tungsten gets returned to the filament to increase life
and operating temperature for efficient light output.
I don't doubt thet tungsten halogen driven lasers are viable, so why did they
become rare, even obsolete? Obviously diode pumping is more efficient, but
changing lamps is so easy, such lasers might have found a lot of use in low-
cost industries. So why didn't they? Anyone know?
Samuel M. Goldwasser
Arc lamps are 5-10 times as efficient. For 2 or 3 W, the halogen makes
sense but probably not for much more. Requiring water cooling for 2 or
3 W is also somewhat annoying. ;)
Lostgallifreyan
They don't, do they? Not the lamp wall anyway, those walls have to get hot
for the tungsten to be returned by the halogen convection, otherwise you
can't run them strongly enough to get the limited power they can deliver.
Maybe the rod does, but I don't know, can't they be designed for a given
temperature? I concede that arc lamps are better, that way lies Laserscopes,
something I know I'll never have because shipping it would cost more than a
US buyer would need to pay for one.. But then the complexity rises sharply,
and the safety hazards. I've seen that a firm called CVI did make tungsten
halogen pumped YAG lasers, and I'm not sure why they stopped. I don't mean
general ideas or speculations about that' no matter how reasoned they are,
because laser use can depend on end users' conditions that no-one predicted.
I don't know if anyone who worked with CVI reads posts here but if so, any
comment? What straw broke this fragile camel's back?
geso
The halogen pumped lasers I have use water cooling, but only the rod
and gold reflectors are water cooled not the lamps themselves.
Pics are coming...