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Registered Member #1521
Joined: Thu Jun 05 2008, 10:46AM
Location: Hungary
Posts: 128
Could please someone tell me, what is the right gas mixture for a sealed CO2 laser, and which company is the cheapest to buy from such a mixture? I have contacted our local gas company "Messer" but they offered me a horribly high price at about $1600 for a 2litre 160bar cylinder of gas mixture that contained about 3% of Xe gas.
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
It is my understanding for sealed tubes, unlike flowing gas ones, require very careful mixing and just buying a strait bottle of mixed gas won't necessarily give a good lifetime. Traditionally you would have separate tanks for He N2 CO2 H20 Xe CO etc and fill with separate tanks. Furthermore, you need to have very pure gases, which further raises the price. You might be able to get away with a bottle of normal CO2 laser mix, and a separate H2O and Xe source (or whatever the tube in question is supposed to be filled with), you only need a tiny amount so a small 'lecture bottle' would probably do the job.
Registered Member #311
Joined: Sun Mar 12 2006, 08:28PM
Location:
Posts: 253
You would also need a way to accurately measure how much of each gas you added, after you'd pulled a decent vacuum. Unless you have all the gear, probably better to get a pro to do it. As mentioned above, the alt.lasers newsgroup is the best place to ask.
Registered Member #902
Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040
in Scientific American's Amateur Scientist series, they featured a whole several articles on homemade gas lasers, including a CO2 gas laser with a home filled tube- I'll see if I can dig it up, but I'm sure you can find it online
Registered Member #56
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445
The key difference here is most hobby tubes are 'flowing gas', that is you hook it up to a big tank and slowly flow gas through the laser. This is simple, and the gas mix does not need to be very tightly controlled or pure so it is cheap.
It sounds like Omegalabs wants to fill a more modern 'sealed' type tube, which is filled and then runs for set period of time before it needs to be refilled again--these tubes are much more popular in modern days because they are smaller/more convenient, but as noted above without the proper tools to get exactly the right gas mix they are not trivial to refill on a hobby budget.
Registered Member #1521
Joined: Thu Jun 05 2008, 10:46AM
Location: Hungary
Posts: 128
Thank you all for the answers. It seems to me, that I should have to build a flow type laser, simply because it is cheaper than the sealed type. I found a type of catalyst NASA developed, for CO2 lasers, to recycle the laser gas. Unfortunately I can't find it now. If you don't mind, I would have another question. How can I calculate the transparency of the ZnSe output coupler, for a (100W optical output) 1200mm long resonator. Does it have an equation?
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Cheap CO2 laser mixture?
