Built a laser with my own two hands!

Kestrel

Kestrel

Well-known member
Fun little lab side project we've been working on for a few months now.... Building a CO2 laser from scratch!

Finally got some of the bugs worked out earlier today... Only seeing around 0.8-1W output at the moment, but it's enough to burn paper, which still makes me pretty darn happy. CO2 output wavelength is around 10.6 microns... which is in the infrared, and not visible with the naked eye. The glowing plasma discharge in the tube is rather pretty, though.

Alignment of the highly reflective mirror and output coupler are far from optimized; when we pull a vacuum on the tube, the alignment shifts, and we're not getting nearly the gain we should be getting. Gas mixture is also suspect, too.

Once all the bugs are worked out, I'm hoping to see around 30W or so - plenty to melt through your arm and stuff.

jID9gEpl.jpg


:party

Time for beer!
 
msethhunter

msethhunter

Well-known member
My buddies dad built a lazer gun and is marketing it to defense contractors. It's got a battery pack that'll last 20 minutes, and cut a person in two. I'll try and get some pixtures of it.
 
Holeshot

Holeshot

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dude, youtube the thing melting through a BMW tire. Then I'll come over and we'll take the Estate for some brodies!
 
B

BMW

Block My Way
If you're really going to get that amount of power, please be careful. Keep in mind that gold isn't the only surface that can reflect a 10.6 beam.
 
shouldnthave

shouldnthave

Taze away, Yana...
BMW said:
If you're really going to get that amount of power, please be careful. Keep in mind that gold isn't the only surface that can reflect a 10.6 beam.
Click to expand...

^^^
Screw that dude! Take chances, and video!!

Good job. The closest I ever came to a gas laser was eating Taco Bell three times in one day on a road trip.
 
Kestrel

Kestrel

Well-known member
BMW said:
If you're really going to get that amount of power, please be careful. Keep in mind that gold isn't the only surface that can reflect a 10.6 beam.
Click to expand...

That wooden table is in the corner of one of our bigger laser labs. Out of view of the photo, on one of the optical tables in the room, is a 100W CO2 we've been working with for the last couple of months. That thing is a monster! We've been trying to create tapers in optical fiber for sake of ring resonator fabrication, along with trying to ablate/machine a small radius of curvature in the end of an optical fiber in order to create a very small Fabry-Perot interferometer.

Rest assured, I'll certainly bust out a proper beam block when the time comes. :thumbup
 
auntiebling

auntiebling

megalomaniacal troglodyte
Staff member
Kestrel said:
That wooden table is in the corner of one of our bigger laser labs. Out of view of the photo, on one of the optical tables in the room, is a 100W CO2 we've been working with for the last couple of months. That thing is a monster! We've been trying to create tapers in optical fiber for sake of ring resonator fabrication, along with trying to ablate/machine a small radius of curvature in the end of an optical fiber in order to create a very small Fabry-Perot interferometer.

Rest assured, I'll certainly bust out a proper beam block when the time comes. :thumbup
Click to expand...

i have the weirdest boner right now
 
Kestrel

Kestrel

Well-known member
auntiebling said:
i have the weirdest boner right now
Click to expand...

I'll post some more eye candy later, and maybe a video or two once I can fix the mirror alignment and get a bit more gain / output. Who would have imagined being a physics PhD student would be so much fun?
 
auntiebling

auntiebling

megalomaniacal troglodyte
Staff member
Kestrel said:
I'll post some more eye candy later, and maybe a video or two once I can fix the mirror alignment and get a bit more gain / output. Who would have imagined being a physics PhD student would be so much fun?
Click to expand...

it's cuz you enjoy it. i miss academia in some ways, but i wasn't that interested in math to go beyond the BS degree. if 'farting around building random shit in the machine shop' had been a graduate degree i might have continued. i probably shouold have gone into robotics.

dmaxAl said:
Must have been all that talk about photon emission :twofinger
Click to expand...

i'll never tell
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top