Created: 7/2/1999   Last Update: May-29-2000

The above shot is of the Co2 laser running on air, not lasing.  I thought it looked cool so I kept this image from the old page.   Below are the newest additions to the image collection.   Each image has a documented description to explain what's going on and what you are looking on.  questions and comments always welcome via the 'contact' page, or the address at the bottom of the page.   Thanks for looking around.

This is my Co2 laser, it consists of a commercial head.   Although this may be somewhat of a cheat in some peoples eyes, this was a must for me to fit it within my budget.   Even with the tube pre-built for me, the investment was still pretty large when you tank into account all the other accesories.

The picture above is the Co2 laser running, and burning a plank of wood which was in reach

   It's hard to make out in the picture but there is a large plexiglass shield which prevents any possible backwash or reflections from reaching anyone who might be viewing the laser burning.  The plasma bore lights up blue in the photo's, but is actually a darker salmon-pink color.

This image shows the laser running on a 15kV/30mA transformer at regular 120 volts input, with variac I could go up to 140, but I didn't want to risk my transformer as everything seemed to be going 'too well' as it was :)   The tube should be able to handle 60mA of input power, so consider this as a 'half power' burn.

This is what's left of the target area after a 30-45 second run.   The big spot in the middle is the most recent with the laser running with coolant.  The smaller burnt areas were produced by the laser running without coolant.   It becomes fairly obvious why liquid cooling is needed with these lasers.  Aside from obvious use of keeping the components cool, it also keeps the gas cool and improves efficiency by quite a bit.

This is the OC(Output Coupler) end of the tube, you can see where the gas line(clear) feeds into the polished aluminum piece.. The OC optics is mounted between the nylon(?) piee and the metal plate on the far right.   I assume these metal bars which run the full length of the assembly are made of kovar or another low expansion metal.

A close up shot of the bore, and the water cooling jacket.   The picture appears foggy, but this is due mostly to the tons of little bubbles on the glass I couldn't seem to get rid of, hopefully in time they will vanish.  More of a cosmetic issue though and I won't drive myself nuts over something of that sort.

Here you can see the single 15kV/30mA neon sign transformer which I am currently using.  Pretty soon there will be another one sitting on top of it so I can get more power out of this laser.  The black segment on the support rail is black electrical tape which I used to keep direct arcs from forming when the power supply was accidently left on without vacuum in the tube.

This is the vacuum pump I used for the laser.   It's more than adequate for Co2 laser use.  It is an Edwards Speedivac model.  I plan to be using this one for many other projects and lasers in the future.  It works very well and is nice and quiet.

This is the variac I used.  It overkill by about a factor or 9 or 10 times my required needs, but it will also be used in future projects with higher current demands.   In it's current ganged setup it can hand up to 44 amps of 220VAC.  I am currently only using one of the units for 120VAC control.   The variacs are motor driven and wired to two buttons,  one to increase the power, and one to decrease the power.  I hope to put this in a nicer looking box with a digital voltmeter and some logic to run presets.

This is a fuzzy picture of my tank of laser pre-mix.   The two gauges on the right hand side of the picture are for the regulator on the tank.  The gauge off to the top left is a cheap vacuum/pressure gauge.  I wanted to make sure that I could see any positive pressure which may be building up in the tube for any reason, so I went this way.  It's not accurate enough to use for taking scientific notes on pressure, but it let's me get into the ballpark and the rest is done by 'feel'.

My low budget water pump.. It's one of those $5 drill pumps available at most hardware stores attached to an old drill.   This will eventually be replaced with a submersible pump to reduce the amount of junk that's sitting all over the laser table.

This is a shot of the water storage tank (on the left) and the DI(de-ionizing) water filter on the right hand side.   There is a particle filter also, but it was leaking air.   I circulated the water through particle filter for several minutes, then removed it for the trial runs of the lasers.  Since the electrodes of this laser come in direct contact with the cooling water it was necessary to use the DI filter to bring the resistance of the water to a high enough level to not 'short' the laser tube.   I am very satisfied with these results.

The above two shots are of the Co2 burning stuff with a focusing lense, thought I would throw these in, I'm sorry about the blurry shots, I'm working on some better ones :)

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