Fishing for info's (manuals, kinetic enhancement possibilities) on ebay'd Oxford CU10

[robotarmy]

Hey all!

I've just become the proud owner of an oxford lasers CU10, a 10 watt copper vapour laser.

Does anyone have any information on these things? They sat outside under a tarp for a week (NOT my doing, ....) but they're dry and I'd like to do some basic testing on them before sparking them up.

Also wondering about adding HBr or HCl to the gas mix to do kinetic enhancement... obviously this adds nasty chemicals to the already risky business of HV, lasers, high temperatures etc, but I'm just curious more than anything...

So yeah, any ideas how to start running these things up? things to test, look out for, manuals, general information, anything!

Thanks a lot!

[robotarmy]

(Actually, I've got two, but the insulating jacket between the inside ceramic? tube and the outer pyrex tube is black....so i'm assuming it's forked and for parts)

[mixedgas]

This is one time you should call Oxford.

I would not assume anything, if its "forked" the vacuum will not hold. I'd worry more about internal arcs on that tube.

The last time this happened, I was some what involved. The big monster stopped near my place on the way to its new home.

Oxford US was great on support after they were convinced the hobby user would be safe around 480 and say 35 watts of optical power.
The manual was a huge set of PDFs. Wonderful amounts of detail.

Try Oxford UK, I'm pretty sure they will not bite.

Those use Neon and pure copper, aka OFHC electrical wire. The one I saw did not have the right plumbing for halogens. Dr C.E. Little's work came a bit later.

If that one also has the oil filled power supply, do you have the oil? (Shell Diphala HV oil)

PM me if things don't work out. I might still have the hard drive, but the technology is very specific to a given model

Steve

[robotarmy]

You know what, I was going to mention I already had, and that they didn't bite, and that they were going to do their best to help sometime but that their engineers were all either busy of off sick!

I'm glad I made that call, but I thought I'd put some cheeky feelers out here as well

If you're talking about the 'BIG' CVL in 300EVIL's prof pic, I saw the thread, and that thing looks amazing. Thanks for the tip!

I've managed to find a 50 L cylinder of N5 neon from BOC gasses for £115 delivered (!!!!! win), but what's this business of HBr doubling power? What are these things 'like' to use? What are the sort of applications we could use them for? Dye pumping? Micromachining!? Cutting? Looking awesome?!

(There's a bit of a back-story to this... when I got the argon laser a while back, the ALC68, I started a hackspace in Reading so I'd have somewhere to play with it. We've got a space, we've had it for a year, and our first proper group purchase was these two lasers. We were working on getting bits together to DIY a CuBr, then these came up on ebay! http://readinghackspace.org.uk/ )

Thanks!!
Ryan

[robotarmy]

This is one time you should call Oxford.

I would not assume anything, if its "forked" the vacuum will not hold. I'd worry more about internal arcs on that tube.

The last time this happened, I was some what involved. The big monster stopped near my place on the way to its new home.

Oxford US was great on support after they were convinced the hobby user would be safe around 480 and say 35 watts of optical power.
The manual was a huge set of PDFs. Wonderful amounts of detail.

Try Oxford UK, I'm pretty sure they will not bite.

Those use Neon and pure copper, aka OFHC electrical wire. The one I saw did not have the right plumbing for halogens. Dr C.E. Little's work came a bit later.

If that one also has the oil filled power supply, do you have the oil? (Shell Diphala HV oil)

PM me if things don't work out. I might still have the hard drive, but the technology is very specific to a given model

Steve

I haven't SEEN any oil, but I have seen what looks like a welded box, with a sealed on lid with a 'pin' style heat sink, two mahoosive HV terminals, some equally mahoos 30 kV caps, and some coax connectors on it. I sort of assumed that's where the thyratron lived but I'm not really sure about anything with these things other than generally reading about CVL's. There's also a big potted semiconductor-ish box, sort of a very oversized DC-DC converter with two HV terminals, a ground lug and a fibre optic port on top connected to the 'thyratron heater controller'??

It's all a bit mad-scientist in there, which is why I'm being SUPER shy about going and poking around. I'm in the process of building a set of safety goggles for this thing that involves a pair of myvu video goggles and a webcam What sort of plumbing would be required for halides?

[mixedgas]

The oil sets in a big polished stainless steel box around the HV parts, if that one needs oil.
The big one needed oil, several gallons.

Goes without saying it needed to be the right oil, and clean, without big bubbles. The lid pretty much lifted off the tank, so I think you'd know if it was there.

To answer your vailed question,

Thyratron tube will need two tungsten heaters, one for the active hydrogen supply, and one for the cathode heater. Its only a few Torr of hydrogen in the sealed thyratron.
No risk of hydrogen flash fire if you break it. It has a small chamber with a hydrogen adsorber, if you heat it, it keeps a constant level of H2 or D2 in the tube.
The heaters will need to float electrically from some parts of the rest.

Some sort of special passivated nickle tubing for the bulk halides, maybe some forms of stainless, well out of my remit. Also usually needs a special vac pump if there is lots of it. Again, well out of my remit.


Steve

[robotarmy]

Right, got manuals! Also, permission has been given for these to be passed around with the sentiment "it’s nice to hear the old lasers are still being used."

http://readinghackspace.org.uk/wiki/...pperlasers.zip

Let me know if you can't get at the file, anywhere else you guys think it's worth uploading it?

[mixedgas]

Downloading now.

Feed the URL to Sam at the Laser FAQ via his contact form.

Please let me know the part numbers are on the charging diode.
I'm curious what is that fast, holds off that much voltage, handles that rep rate, and lives for hundreds of hours.
Steve

[robotarmy]

Here's a link to the OCR'd versions, not sure if it works!

https://mega.co.nz/#!xM9CyCRZ!Fhm3vV...NRwLdUq75apET0

[mixedgas]

I fed the URL to Sam, lets see if he bites.

You'll need to check out the vacuum pumps first, and then probably need to change the pump oil. Let me know if you need a good vacuum guage, I have quite a few I can let go of cheap.

I skimmed the manual. Its the usual very complete Oxford manual with plenty of cautions and good detail.

The fast HV probe and the HV oil will probably take some time to obtain. I would not run the thyratrons blind without the fast scope and the probe.

If you win the lottery you could always buy a sealed ceramic "Copper HYbrid" tube from Kristal in Russia. (Just kidding!)


Steve