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Idea- Portable CO2 laser?

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Gofilord

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Ok, when I say portable I don't mean something you can put in your pocket.
It will be big and heavy, but more like a gun sort of design.

So CO2 tubes need a power supply that outputs a few tens or hundreds of KV and just a few micro amps.

So basically, we can take a huge 6V battery with maybe 20Ah of capacity, and then have a few transformers that will make the 6V 60KV (just throwing numbers here) and the 20A several micro amps.

Why can't someone do that and have a potable 40W gun?
 





It has been done before. I think its a bad idea. Invisible wavelength 40W portable laser. There's a million things that could go wrong with that.

Also keep in mind that CO2 tube needs to be water cooled (Not sure if this is at all times or just for longer uses)
 
Yep, RF driver was DC powered with very high driving currents. His is ~12W. Anything more would take more than a bunch of 18650s in series to make anything practical. Those RF tube/driver sets are hard to come by, and the ordinary HV driven tubes would be dangerous to carry around.
 
^It is. Safer than high voltage, but far less efficient and more difficult to design.

Gofilord said:
So CO2 tubes need a power supply that outputs a few tens or hundreds of KV and just a few micro amps.
Click to expand...

You're way off. tens of thousands of volts, and tens of milliamps. Something like 22kV and 18mA might be typical for a 40W tube.

Gofilord said:
So basically, we can take a huge 6V battery with maybe 20Ah of capacity, and then have a few transformers that will make the 6V 60KV (just throwing numbers here) and the 20A several micro amps.
Click to expand...

ETW67.gif


That's... not how electrics work. Drivers can be built, but a portable CO2 laser is dangerous and useless.
 
I was going to actually do this. You could carry a backpack full of maxwell 3000 farad 2.7v super caps in series to get 12V, use a car inverter to boost to 100-120v, Fishtank pump goes into the inverter along with the original co2 psu, you carry a water tank "Fill blank"

Boom, 40W portable co2. Would be VERY dangerous though with all the HV, water, and infrared. Oh and possibly fire and explosions and maybe even broken glass. :/
 
Cyparagon said:
You're way off. tens of thousands of volts, and tens of milliamps. Something like 22kV and 18mA might be typical for a 40W tube.
Click to expand...

That goes without mentioning how those are the perfect electrical parameters for killing yourself. Stay safe!
 
I suppose it mostly depends on where the current flows. Since electrical shocks are most likely to flow from one hand to the other (due to the nature of careless electrical work), the current is assumed to be flowing through the chest - across the heart. When its 18mA DC directly across the top half of heart, the reaction of fibrilation is assumed.

I'm sure I could easily survive 100mA across my hand or my arm. :wave:

Too bad accidental shocks rarely happen like that. :(
 
I tried to connect my CO2 laser with batteries and an inverter. It works, but it certainly does not make it "portable" :P
...BTW I personally would not want to carry around a device cooled with water, while "passing" some KV in electrical cables... the purpose? It does not make sense IMO
 
Now, if you can pulse it, it won't need any cooling but air and a few seconds after each pulse. However, I'm not sure if you can pulse CO2 tubes just like that...

Also, pulsing would allow to use a smaller power source and a capacitor bank that charges every shot.
 
I think in the case of Co2 lasers, the water cooling is used to absorb thermal shock to the glass tube. Its not the glass getting hot is so much the issue, as is the glass heating up very quickly. In the case you have a plasma in the tube which can be immediately be there or gone at any given time, you need something that can absorb immediate heat quickly. The water might warm up over time, but that is not such a big danger to the glass as long as it takes some time to heat up.

Don't go and run only 1 liter of water through your tube just to save expense or space.. you don't want your glass to get so hot so as to make it soft!
 
Now, let's say I buy the 40W CO2 tube off ebay for a 100$, a co2 laser power supply and a lens, that's all I need to get that laser going?
That's quite cheap if you ask me, a 445nm 9mm ±2.5W diode costs a 100$..
 
You will need to different focal length lenses in order to focus the beam out to a large distance. But if you just want to get the laser "going", you don't need any lenses.
 
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