Hobbit YAG - The Project

[Laserhobbit]

All,

After a slight case of thread highjacking I decided to start a new thread for anyone who wants to follow, comment and help with the repair, restoration and life support of my Laser Infinity 2000 YAG. The history to date, for those who may not be aware of this project is that last August I acquired a Laser Infinity Aerial display YAG system, manufactured by Photon manufacturing in the US. For those interested the details of the system can be found here:

The system was ex the touring company for Starlight Express in the US. It has an absolute wealth of really interesting paperwork, including variances for the various location etc. My version is a slightly older version from the one in the spec sheet, but is broadly the same, including three fibre launchers and a range of fibres from 100 foot to 150 foot, including a CT based remote scanning head.

One of the first challenges was to acquire a cooling system, as the previous owner had "thrown away a bunch of weird looking pipework and radiators, as it can't have anything to do with the laser". So at last years UKLEM, with the able help and assistance of various people, most notable Stanwax (Rob) and Esbe (Steve) plus various others we made our first attempt at running this system. But we fell at the first fence as we discovered some of the seals around the rod had split and the head had been contaminated with water and a weird green deposit. As this is just a taster summary I will post and discuss this later, very interested in feedback from everyone as to where this comes from.

So I went on the hunt for the parts and a little more guidance. enter Alex Hay, owner of Photon Manufacturing, again a long story, but suffice to say a really helpful and nice guy. Soon I had the parts I needed. But still no long term chiller solution.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when Dan Briggs came up with an ex LaserSc0pe chiller. So the scene was set for the Surfleet UKLEM last weekend. This is also where you'll find the hijacked thread, sorry But here we had a magical success to be followed by being brought back to the earth with a bump. Green Light . But then the following morning, pondering the slightly low level of light and some instability we discovered a cracked lamp housing . My heart sank, as did the assembled throng. But with the expert help of RobbotArmy (Ryan) and some more really inspring information from Alex, we had a couple of solutions. again ably assisted by Mr Briggs, we had enough confidence we could solve the issue if the block was a write off to attempt a repair.

So yesterday at the Worldwide Headquarters of Stanwax Laser, Rob and I looked at a repair. again I will post details later, but suffice to say Rob was the innovative expert we have all come to know him as.

Yes, those of you on the LEM thread know the outcome. A repaired block and a lot more green, fairly stable light. Still a long way to go, hence the new thread, but a massive confidence boost.

So this thread will post some of the history nuggets of the story to date and chart the journey ahead. Please feel free to comment, follow and offer help and advice. But I also feel really humbled by the help of my friends in getting this to where it is now. So I will thank anyone who can help and need to offer sincere thanks to, Stanwax, Dan Briggs, Gashead, Esbe, Robbotarmy, Alex Hay and all in the UKLEM scene. really Thank you.

Lets see where we can go from here

Cheers

Steve

[stanwax]

I have enjoyed the rollercoaster of working on this laser, and I cant wait to do more on it in future. I hope we can bring it back to its spec'd power and i think we have a very good chance of that but we need to take small careful steps.
I look forward to seeing it lighting up the skies over Surfleet (and other places) in the future

Rob

[VDX]

... what NdYAG head is it?

Recently I've got two NdYAG marking lasers with 120Watt and 150Watt lamp pumped rods and will try to bring one to running conditions ... the other could then maybe be surplus.

Viktor

[Laserhobbit]

Viktor,

Thanks for the offer not sure yet the exact sizes. But it would be interesting to find out what size the YAG rod is, as if it fits I would be very interested as my YAG rod is not great.

Thanks

Steve

[VDX]

Hi Steve,

... can't upload the images of the opened laser heads - try to link some images from another forums thread ...

NdYAG-laser1 (150Watts): http://forums.reprap.org/file.php?25...aser-Offen.jpg

-laser2 left (120Watts): http://forums.reprap.org/file.php?25...Watt_links.jpg

-laser2 right: http://forums.reprap.org/file.php?25...att_rechts.jpg

The golden parts are the pumping chambers with lamp and NdYAG-rod ... in the bottom are joints to the water cooling system - maybe 1/2" tubing ...

Viktor

[White-Light]

Hi Steve,

... can't upload the images of the opened laser heads - try to link some images from another forums thread ...

Viktor

Viktor, www.imageshack.us is your friend. Free picture hosting, just copy and paste the "Forum" link and your uploaded pics will appear here.

[VDX]

... don't use imageshack or other 'shaky' image-hosters, if you can stick the images into the forums space ... much longer 'lifetimes' for the content ;-)

I've already uploaded 17 images in the forums image-base, but the images of the lasers throw an error (they aren't oversized), so linked from another of my threads ...

Viktor

[White-Light]

Image shack don't take them down unless you do. Anyway sorry for the diversion Steve, yag is looking great.

[VDX]

Image shack don't take them down unless you do

... depends on the time frame you'll base the 'lifetimes' on - had since the beginnings around 1992 a bunch of BBS-es, forums and threads rendered useless with content-hosters changing structure or conditions, but not with local placed images ... they 'die' or live with the forum :-/

Had an interesting talk with a man from the service company reparing this types of NdYAG-markers: "... any minute you'll invest into them, would be wasted! - go for diode-pumped fiberlasers instead! ... "

I have a working fiber-laser with 50Watts CW @1070nm, another pulsing one to come and many fiber-coupled IR-diodes from broken/burned FL's -- for me the NdYAG's are more interesting for learning and testing some tricks for SLS and Q-switching for higher pulse-energies than possible with AO-modulated fiber-lasers ...

Viktor