UKLEM 5 report from the Ferry...
Hello all,
I did manage to tap in on the ferry's internet. It's not fast but it'll do....
Since i am not going anywhere (except to the mainland Europe) the next 2 hours i decided to write my report about my UKLEM 5 visit (for anyone that is interested ofcourse...if NOT stop here and save yourself some 15 minutes)....
Hey, you're still here ? Cool ! Thanks for your interest... Read on:
First of all:
I would like to make a post to thank ALL the people that were attending UKLEM5 (or contributed in any way or form).
Thank you for the warm welcome i received, the explanations to all my dumb questions and for the fun we had !
On Sunday morning 9.00am i left the hotel, visited a petrolstation for the much needed LPG and a hot cup'o tea ! From there on i drove to the Venue on Wharf Street. When i got there 2 guys where already waiting outside.
I introduced myself and they turned out to be Jim (SmogtheMog) and Carl.
I thanked Jim for the Framestreamer, which worked perfectly and he gave me a box to fit it in as a present !
Later people started joining in, and we talked about lasers and the parkingplaces which got some of the visitors of last year into trouble.
"Hey you can't park there !" soon became the running gag of every new attendant arriving on the scene. Followed by "Sign ? Sign ? What sign ? " ......thanks to mr. Soforene
Suddenly we thought we became part of a gang fight as a big pimp auto mobile turned into the street...Instead of the Uzi's coming from the window to shoot us, a laughing face appeared. It turned out the be the mighty king of Holy Photons himself. Rob arrived.
Not long after that everybody from all over the country started to join us, 2 hour drives, 3 hr drives. Roadblocks, accidents.....
Around 10 o'clock mr. BK arrived to open the doors. Everyone followed him into a dark room. It was a nice spaceous room, with a lot of tables and chairs. We started building the "Laser Arena" by placing all the tables around the dancefloor. Every kind of laser imaginable was brought in:
Argon, Hene, Co2, Greens, RG, RGB , wow...
Not soon after that the room was filled with smoke and all kinds of colored beams from those photon spitting beam machines from hell.
Really nice meeting all the faces behind the forum nicknames.
Everybody was really nice and helped eachother out with questions, or parts.
I met up with Robin who gave me a crashcourse on TECs, diode drivers and optics (very, very interesting! Thanks Robin). Sean Harrison accompanied Robin and he told me before UKLEM that he built his laser on a PC Side panel. As i had some aluminium of 50x40cm left i took it and was glad that i could help Sean out with the ally.
In the afternoon Robin, Sean and myself went to the Subway and had some amazing sandwiches and better yet, NICE COOKIES !!!
Later on i met with Danny who showed me his blue (as i am in the market for a new, sharp blue one...). I really like the beam profile and it was a nice and bright color. Also his triangular setup is a work of art (designful and nicely built). I was surprised to hear he lathed (sp?) and milled all of the part himself. Impressive !
Around 6pm we went to the Firebug bar, it was raining so that wasn't funny, but the talks and jokes were.
At the firebug Bar they didn't have the full menu, but that was no problem. Most of us ordered burgers and we had some interesting conversations.
On the way back Simon (p1t8ull) explained me about temperature control and alignment of optics. Very cool and learned a lot from it, thanks SimoN !
I repaired my Green (again ?) replacing the TEC for one of Robin's.
With Robin and Simons help (and some help of Room Temperature Vulcanizing stuff, Araldite and some luck) we recreated the green. It outputted over 200mW (used to be 150!) on my new Power meter which Rob brought (thanks Rob). I will have to realign the optics at home 1 more time to have the Pump diode hit the vanadate exactly at the right spot, but thanks to the explanation of Simon and Robin that will be ok ! Really look forward doing that.
Then people started hooking up all the projectors on the stage to have the most incredible looking show, where would you find so many projectors in such small area, and you could look, see, feel touch them ?
Rob played the shows from his laptop, and people were even able to see them through one of the live streams (yeah you read correctly) we had livestreams coming off a MOBILE phone !!! Incredible, hoped people liked it ?
If you weren't at UKLEM , shame shame shame...
After the Shows Rob collected us all in front of his table, i fired up the camera and it was time for the RAFFLE !!! Yeah.... how cool...
Just after turning on the camera Rob told that it was tradition that the person travelling the farthest distance must draw the first ball from the box.
So i quickly handed over the camera to Kevin and draw the ball.
Nice prices went out the door ranging from nice RGB Dichro kits (thanks to Bridge) , cool pointers (thanks to Martin Pelikan from Kvant) and Andy to a nice Lamp and a bottle of Dutch liquor i brought.
After the raffle people started to pack, and Rob offered me to help me align my Green which was not a sharp beam. In minutes Rob "the magician of Lasers" tweaked the OC and other stuff to display a very tight beam.
That's what makes people happy. We said goodby to people and i had some Mamba questions left. Since we had to leave the venue, we went to the hotel and Rob gave me a MAMBA 1 on 1. Stuff i did which took me 30 minutes to program, Rob did by pressing maybe 5 buttons.
Really an eye opener. We talked about Mamba, but also Pangolin, lasers, diodes. Rob showed me how i could recognize the correct side of my dichros'. All my questions i had there were answered.
Then, as always, good things come to an end. We had to say goodby, and i thanked Rob for this excellent meet, the patience and time he took to answer all my questions.
And this goes to all of you: Thank you so so very much for all your patience, help and explanations. This was by far my best weekend in a long time (ok i did have to work a lot of weekendsbut still....)
I am now almost across, and after having, NO TRAFFIC JAMS at all in the UK (just 5miles of roadwerk with 50 limit) i was able to talk my way into the 4pm boat which saves me 2 hours (originally i would leave at 6).
After arriving in Dunkirque it's another 360km (roughly 290 miles) to home.
Hope to see a lot of replies when i arrive home ;-)
thanks x 1.000.000 times for organising UKLEM5.
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Originally Posted by stanwax
