Monday, January 6, 2014

Ruby laser design process

I describe the basics of ruby laser design. I'm building a laser with about 8KJ of electrical pump energy.

http://www.susiebeesley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PKIlampbrochure.pdf

http://www.perkinelmer.de/PDFS/downloads/dts_applicationnotehighperformanceflash_final071004.pdf

http://www.fenixtechnology.com/fenixcalc.html

http://www.i-fiberoptics.com/


at

5 comments:

  1. MichaelJanuary 7, 2014 at 1:36 PM

    Hi Ben,

    as always: Great work!
    You might want to check this website: http://www.pulslaser.de/
    The owner is building all kinds of lasers including ruby and YAG ans q-switched ones.
    Also check his other website: http://www.rapp-instruments.de/
    Both sites are a great source of inspiration albeit in germen. But you will get the point.
    Keep up that great work.

    Michael

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2014 at 12:06 PM

    Ben, here is the link for the pop sci story abt "Build Your Own Laser!"

    http://www.popsci.com/article/2006-05/build-your-own-laser

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2014 at 8:56 PM

    Pump with 8 KJ energy - or 5 kW power?

    ReplyDelete
  4. JoshuaJanuary 19, 2014 at 11:01 PM

    Have you looked at the waveform across your cap bank? I would imagine that with such high currents, it would be almost impossible to get a high enough dI/dt to avoid pretty severe ringing, and you'd be seriously limiting the life of those 'lytics.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ben KrasnowJanuary 20, 2014 at 10:59 AM

    Joshua, the original cap bank was used at 900V in the Speedotron, and did not include balancing resistors or intentional inductors. It had an underdamped discharge into the stock 4.8KJ tube. It's true that at higher voltages with more caps in series, I might have more problems. I haven't noticed any ringing though. The ESR of the caps and the resistance of the xenon arc itself add up to 5-10 ohms probably.

    ReplyDelete