New new build

[laserist]

"Design an argon PSU..." I'm terrible with names, but I met this guy somewhere... Said he word for LII and designed a powers supply for an ion. I mentioned that Spectra Physics was building them with triacs now (then) he glanced away for a moment and back and said yeah - that would work. Then left me behind in the whole design flow thing...

[buffo]

Yeah, Gary Stadler was the guy who designed the aftermarket Aurora power supply for small and medium frame ion lasers. It ran on 220V single phase power, but it could run a Lexel 85 or a Spectra Physics 165/168, and it was air-cooled.

Paul Berthot (Clandestiny) had a few of them and used them at some of the early FLEMs to fire up a Lexel 85 by running the supply off the stove outlet in the kitchen, lol.

Adam

[laserist]

There was a acrylic wheel that was a workhorse for Laserium's lumia. It was originally used in Adagio and as a feeder to an offset effect in Neptune in Laserium I. And lots of places after that. I've looked for it on and off for a couple of decades.

DSC00918.JPG

I thought it'd be nice to share:
https://houstonacrylic.com/products/...44200385183970

[laserist]

There's that previously mentioned Neptune's final lingering wisp of Kr red against a black dome 🤗
Thanks for sharing, Brian.
That textured acrylic workhorse looks alot like the upper left one below.
Attachment 62278
3 sfx glass winners ordered from Etsy
Attachment 62277
TRPstainedglass tried to comply with my request for random textures, but these didn't make the cut.
Still, 3 winners @ $10 ea, precut as needed, ain't no big thang.

Noticed the disclaimer on HoustonAcrylic's:
"The corners/edges on acrylic sheets will be unfinished or slightly chipped from cutting down to size."

Ordered these with fingers crossed that a few might be of use. But still need some 2" dia single axis diff grating winners to stack and counter rotate.

I can be difficult, to please, among other things. There are common art glass and plastic versions of this figure that I've bought over the years, and they sort of sucked. Too much scatter. Too much secondary - frequency? I haven't tested this on anything but my dining room wall yet, but side by side with a Laserium disk this looked better. Cleaner and brighter. It does have a tiny straight through highlight at some positions, but it disappears with a lens to correct for the diode's beam size - what I want to test is if the interference improves with a good beam size and divergence. At some point I'll try it at my local planetarium and really see, but I'll have to finish the lumia projector I've been - well - overthinking for way too long.

Thanks

[laserist]

Likewise. Parts are still arriving to finish my build.
Then, I want to test a well aligned RGB module + spatial filtering. The diodes I have produce rectangular beams up close. That messes up color mixing on sfx glass, because of stray RGB around the periphery. Hoping that can be remedied with a 1/8" dia spatial filter.
My goal is to have any interference fx in any mixed color, then duplicate dots of any individual color... even RGB in a row to get that color wave you guys are talking about.
You're all correct about that... while limited to LII's lumia wheels & torture tubes.
"But that's not the shape of my heart."
I'm the freebird, singing my heart, without intellect of math, rhyme, nor score.
Demo videos to come.
😎

I believe that the lumia shape has chromatic aberration with a multicolor beam, and the interference patterns of the different colors won't overlap, but maybe that's limited to chromatic aberration too. We've seen what a raw ion beam's lumia looked like through Laserium's rock turret. I wasn't analyzing the result at the time, but I could always tell a rock turret effect from a discrete color lumia effect.

[laserist]

Sorry about hijacking the thread - we will now return to cool lumia stuff already on progress...

[Displaser]

Sorry about hijacking the thread - we will now return to cool lumia stuff already on progress...

Thanks Brian for the tip on Houston Acrylics. I can attest that the 1/8” clear textured you mentioned is one of the nicest lumia I’ve seen - very similar to the Cathereral Granite in glass I’ve used in the past.

Greg