[rescue] OT - Optics / Laser rescue bits?

[Phil Stracchino]

On 12/22/10 13:22, Christopher Purdy wrote:
> I currently just have a 3mw HeNe Melles Griot head and supply to
> tinker with... but have wanted to try another wavelength for some
> time...  I grew up looking at the old Edmund Scientific Catalogs and
> drooling at the equipment in there...
> 
> It is amazing how much diode technology has improved - nearly 1W from
> a diode in a penlight??? crazy is right - I imagine lots for
> uneducated folks are cooking their retinas...

Yeah, I have a big HeNe tube in my workshop, along with an allegedly
matching power supply, but it won't fire up; I don't have a high-enough
voltage DMM to see whether the PSU is putting out the voltage it should
be.  I could build a voltage divider rig ...  but, really, for what it'd
cost me in terms of time and money to have a big, bulky,
not-very-portable HeNe laser, I could spend a few bucks and have a diode
laser with ten times the output that runs on penlight batteries.

Honestly, for my purposes, given that I'm not even close to running a
full optical bench, it's pretty much a no-brainer.

(So, I guess the tube and power supply would be available to laser geeks
more dedicated than I....)


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.