Holobeam Model 311 Nd:Glass Laser

    This is a laser I picked up a few months ago, it's in need of some care but all off the major components seem to be in tact.   The laser head itself uses a helical flashlamp with no special reflectors at all.   The outside of the flashlamp appears to be wrapped with either fiberglass or asbestos cloth.   The power supply is in good condition, however the head itself was mistreated and there was rust all over inside the head as well as a broken flow tube.

   I'm working on this as time and money provide.   The flow tube is a custom manufactured piece, and I will need to have a new one fabricated if I want to run this laser.   The Neodymium glasslaser rod is about 3/8" by 3-4 inches long over all.   There is heavy pitting on the rod ends, so it's a candidate for having the ends polished and a new AR coating. Anywho onto some pictures (lots of pictures!!!)

ABOVE:   The above two pictures depict the front view and back view of the large holobeam power supply cabinet, the big blue parts are the capacitors, each one is rated  100uF @ 10,000 volts, definetly want to be carefull around this unit when theres this much stored energy around.

ABOVE LEFT: This is just a view of the main power solenoid, the big white terminal in the forground is part of the voltage multiplier on the main PSU transformer.

ABOVE RIGHT:  This is the bleeder solenoid, when the unit is off or the discharge button is pushed, this solenoid drops down and connects the capacitor bank to the bleeder resistors (one of them can be seen, the green component to the right of the solenoid)

ABOVE LEFT:  The big black piece sitting on top of this capacitor is the primary inductor for the circuit, I currently do not have facilities to test the inductance of this coil.

ABOVE RIGHT:  This is a shot of the power transformer as well as one of the capacitors used in a voltage multiplier.  The transformer is rated at 6500 volts, but the entire supply is designed to charge the caps up to 10,000 so with the help of some HV diodes and this cap the transformer is sufficient for reaching these levels.

ABOVE LEFT:  This is a picture of the ignitron firing circuit.  This PSU has a trigger coil on the flashlamp circuit for the flashlamp, as well as this triggatron with it's own trigger circuitry.   I'm not sure why they use the trigatron in this circuit, but it may have something to do with the 'double pulse' feature of the laser.

ABOVE RIGHT:  Just a closer shot of the Ignitron or whatever it may be :)

I seem to have misplaced the images of the head and rod and such, I'll try to get those on here as soon as possible, thanks!