Thyratron for CVL

[GooeyGus]

I would love to do that for a living....

[Doc]

Given that it's several hundred thousand volts based on the length when the chopper parts from the wire (~60 cm), I would suggest that hundreds of milliamps would melt things, so, uh, no. A couple of mA, 4 nF and 300 kV or thereabouts is my calculation. That said, a lot of the arcing will actually be drawn by corona loss at the wingtips of the rotor, since there is cavitation there and thus the pressure is reduced, enhancing corona production.

Yeah, having thought about it; you are obviously correct my guess was a hasty guess not a caclulation (dived on to the site at work), I wasn't taking hundreds of Kv, and hence power in to thought. Even 20mA at that voltage would produce a flaming hot arc.

[LaserLover]

They both perform the same task of dumping a huge stored charge to pulse your laser. A Hydrogen Thyratron requires a power supply, bias control and support circuitry. A triggered spark gap can handle higher power but the by-products of the discharge should be vented using nitrogen gas (quenching with nitrogen gas keeps the spark gap from building up high levels of internal atmospheric contamination caused by the discharge, IE Ozone etc...which will affect the spark gap oepration). You could also build a rotary spark gap which is popular with tesla coil builders. I have a new triggered spark gap designed for Lumonics Lasers for sale if you wish to purchase it, P.M. me.
Good luck
Rick