Recent content by tolstiakov

As I already promised, I wrote a document describing the alignment procedure I performed to get this laser going. Sam already gave it a green light and he will publish it on his Laser FAQ soon. I am posting it here as well, hoping that somebody finds it useful. I would appreciate all comments...

Steve, thank you very much for your detailed answer, I'm familiar with cathodes used in electron tubes, but not these special ion-resistant ones. It would be great if you could share the document which you mentioned, I'd certainly love to read more on this topic. So it seems that I should build...

You may be right, good topic, definitely worth discussing. No, currently I'm running the filament using a regulated DC SMPS with a gentle voltage ramp on start-up to handle the cold filament. Positive end towards the bore. I don't have the center tapped transformer + variac to control the...

Solved by measuring the prism tilt angle and rough intensity estimation, the lines from my previous post were 476.5, 488 and 496.5. I reconfigured the prism mount once again and got the missing 514.5, now I have enough travel to adjust for any of these. 488 is the brightest, not the 514, it...

More mysteries - I set the prism travel correctly now and got the blue line, but I also got another unexpected green line! In the pics it is Line1, it is relatively close to the strongest one (Line2 - I assume this is the 514.5nm), and further away I got a blue line (Line3 - I assume this is the...

Success :) :) :) I got the 514nm line! I repeated the He-Ne procedure outlined in my previous post to utmost precision, this time adding a few additional checks and carefully paying attention that my adjustments are carried out in such a way that the process is well convergent. After 3 hours of...

Frankly speaking I cannot say for sure which mirror is the OC, and which is the HR. To both the naked eye and the camera, the cathode mirror (the angled one on the prism side) looks much more transparent than the anode mirror (please see pics in the previous posts). But this can be very...

Unfortunately I do not have another argon, just a 633nm HeNe and a 532nm DPSS. Could probably get a cheap Chinese 445nm pointer. The mirrors are sealed in their own mounts, the bellows on the tube allow for small tilts required for alignment, nothing can be removed. One thing that is open to...

After hours of alignment attempts - no luck :( This prism on the cathode side complicates the procedure quite a bit, the apparent bore axis is offset from the center of the prism window (or mirror, hell if I know what it is), and it seems to be that way by design, so I have no idea about its...

I've made progress, I got the arc going :) This clear glass tube looks amazing when fired up. Long story: Filament was at 3.0V (asymmetric power supply, but the tube didn't mind much). For anode power I set up my trusty old DC-AC inverter (which is actually a switch mode DC amplifier that can...

Thanks for the answer, regarding the discharge path - it exhibits an interesting phenomenon - it seems to be sensitive to the voltage slew rate. If I hook the tube to the HeNe PSU and switch it on (slow slew), it always fires through the bore. And if I have the PSU on and touch the anode with...

This is my first post, so hi everybody :) I recently saved a NEC GLS-3030 (actually it is marked 3032) head from a gruesome fate, without the PSU. Never thought it would be of any use but after inspecting the tube I think there may be a chance to bring it back to life. Brief condition of the...