<==== Sam's Laser FAQ ====>
Safety, Info, Links, Parts, Types, Drive, Construction
A Practical Guide to Lasers for Experimenters and Hobbyists
Version 6.08
Copyright © 1994-2001
Samuel M. Goldwasser
--- All Rights Reserved ---
For contact info, please see the
Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ
Email Links Page.
Reproduction of this document in whole or in part is permitted
if both of the following conditions are satisfied:
- This notice is included in its entirety at the beginning.
- There is no charge except to cover the costs of copying.
Sam's Laser FAQ Welcome Page
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Welcome to Sam's Laser FAQ!
This collection of documents, called "Sam's Laser FAQ", has a great deal of
practical information on a variety of laser related topics. If you are already
familiar with its scope, purpose, and general organization, you can go directly
to Sam's Laser FAQ Table of Contents.
However, if this is your first visit - or you have been away for awhile -
check out the summary and version update info below.
Sam's Laser FAQ provides a wealth of useful (not just textbook) information on
many types of lasers of interest to the experimenter and hobbyist:
- Basic laser principles, laser safety, general laser information, laser
instruments and applications, laser and parts sources, laser discussion groups
and newsgroups, and many references, and links. There is even a list of
laser experiments and projects. (The descriptions are somewhat sparse at the
moment but there are also links to other related Web sites.)
- Diode, Helium-Neon (HeNe), Argon/Krypton (Ar/Kr) Ion, Carbon Dioxide (CO2),
Helium-Cadmium (HeCd), and solid state (SS) laser characteristics, drive
requirements, power supply design considerations. Schematics for at least
15 diode laser drivers, 30 complete HeNe laser power supplies,
6 complete Ar/Kr ion laser power supplies, and 6 pulsed
SS laser power supplies, as well as many other support circuits like
regulators and modulators.
- Amateur laser construction (building lasers from raw materials rather than
from laser components). Extensive material on getting started in this
exciting and challenging pastime (often a great deal of time!) as well as
complete descriptions - with diagrams - of the home-built lasers from the
Scientific American "Amateur Scientist" columns (and the collection "Light
and its Uses") and other sources.
Sam's Laser FAQ was developed to provide a unique resource for experimenters
and hobbyists - as well as just plain old basement tinkerers. To the best of
my knowledge, nothing as comprehensive has ever been available anywhere else
in the explored universe (and almost certainly beyond) either on-line or in
print.
If this was what you were looking for, your search is over! :-)
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A Word About These Pages
Sam's Laser FAQ is declared to be a fluff-free zone! There will be no
unnecessary, superfluous, or useless graphics of any kind - including but
not limited to: dancing, gyrating, or other animated icons, colored textured
backgrounds that are impossible to read through, or forced downloading of
bit intense pictures that may be of no interest to you. Nor, will I ever
expect you to use a particular brand of Web browser to be able to effectively
access these pages. There are and never will be any advertisements, cookies,
or other impositions on your time and space. In the time that it may take
wading through a single monstrosity of the professional Web page designers
at other sites, you will be able to find out what you want to know, when
you want to know it! What a concept. :-) (Note, however, that your browser
needs to be configured properly to make sense of the many ASCII diagrams,
schematics, and tables. See the document: Suggested
Browser Settings for font and other related information.)
In return for this gold mine of information, please make a serious effort to
find the answers to your questions before contacting me. It may take just a
wee bit of effort and could stress a few neurons in the process, but there is
an excellent chance that what you seek is covered here. Should you be really
stuck - or just want to discuss lasers, I will respond to email in a timely
manner. However, if your questions indicate that you haven't even gotten past
the Welcome Page, AND I am in a good mood, you will get a somewhat polite
reply to read the appropriate chapter(s) of the FAQ. On the other hand, if it
is a bad day, and you are really really lucky, you will probably be ignored.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoy discussing lasers with laser enthusiasts and
novices alike, and will be happy to do so at almost any hour of the day or
night. However, if you're seeking some basic information, I would really
really appreciate it if you do at least a bit of your homework first. In
any case, if you do email me, I expect to be able to hit the reply key for
my mail program and not get bounced email. I will not attempt to unjumble
any anti-SPAM email addresses! I have posted over 20,000 articles to the
USENET newsgroups using my true email address. (And, you won't pick up SPAM
via private email anyhow.) Yes, SPAM is a pain but I tolerate the small
amount I get so others will not be inconvenienced.
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Navigating Sam's Laser FAQ
Under ideal conditions, the entire 5+ MB text of Sam's Laser FAQ would be in a
single file and your access to it would be via a 100 GB/s link. In a few
years, such capabilities may appear primitive but for now, one can only dream
of avoiding the World Wide Wait. :) Therefore, the organization of these
pages ends up being a compromise. If you have the space, installing a local
copy of Sam's Laser FAQ on a reasonably fast computer would be best (though you
lose out on automatic updates). See: Sam's Laser FAQ
Local Installation for details.
Sam's Laser FAQ is divided into chapters and sections. Except
for the introductory material including the Table of Contents (ToC),
each chapter is a separate file and has its own Sub-Table of Contents
(Sub-ToC) Anything smaller than a chapter is called a section and has its own
header and link from the chapter's Sub-ToC. Multiple sections may be grouped
where they are related to one topic or related topics. For the most part,
there are no nested text files. With one or two possible exceptions, the
only files below the text files are those for diagrams and photos. To
minimize download time, there are no in-line graphics anywhere except the
Laser Equipment Gallery where relaxation is encouraged. :)
Links to return to the ToC are located at the beginning of every chapter
and links to return to its Sub-ToC (top of page) are located at the end
of the chapter as well as between major sections. There is also a link at
the end of every chapter to the next chapter.
Hyperlinks within the text will either be to other chapters or sections of
Sam's Laser FAQ (in which case they will generally be preceded with "chapter:"
or "section:" as appropriate) or to other pages on this Web site or elsewhere.
All local links have complete URLs including the filename so it is possible to
tell if the link is to some other page (if the filename doesn't match the one
currently being read).
All of Sam's Laser FAQ uses the very simplest HTML. This is partly because I
have to maintain it and partly to avoid fluff. :) I have thought about adding
a framed entry point which would include the ToC(s) down the left edge and
would be interested in any opinions you may have on this and other formatting
issues.
I realize that a fast search facility would be really nice. Eventually, I
may have one (I refuse to use free search engines that impose advertising.
They tend to be too slow anyhow.) In the meantime, realize that you can
always use Ctrl-F in your browser to search any single document. The two
special files: Sam's Laser FAQ Expanded ToC and
Sam's Laser FAQ Comprehensive Table of Contents
provide a means of using this technique to find desired topics with a minimum
of effort. However, if someone would offer to provide a fast non-commercial
search engine that I can just drop in with near zero effort, please contact me
me via the
Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ
Email Links Page.
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Sam's Laser FAQ Sites
Check out the Home and Mirror Site Locations page
for a list of places to find Sam's Laser FAQ (as well as the complete
Sci.Electronics.Repair (S.E.R) FAQ and Silicon Sam's Technology Resource
(SSTR).
The mirror sites (no pun intended... OK, well maybe just a little
one-sided one) will always maintain a reasonably current version of this
document. Check the individual sites for the latest version and specific
viewing and download options and try to use the site nearest you to minimize
Web traffic!
There is also an early version (even predates the name "Sam's Laser FAQ") at
The Laser Resource
Library which is quite ancient (and ugly) at this point. I have no plans
to update it mainly because I have lost the password and become disgusted with
the annoying advertising imposed by the operators of that site. :-)
We are always looking for contributions (of all types) in any and all laser
related areas to expand the content of these sites.
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Version Update Information
While there may be small updates almost daily, when the number of bit changes
and additions reaches a critical (but random) threshold, an entry is added
here to summarize the major enhancements.
In addition to many general additions and enhancements in virtually all areas,
the following may be noteworthy:
In addition to many general additions and enhancements in virtually all areas,
the following may be noteworthy:
- Sam's Laser FAQ now has its own Web domains:
laserfaq.com,
laserfaq.net, and
laserfaq.org.
Going to one of these will redirect you to a Web site with a recent version
of Sam's Laser FAQ. A German translation is also under development and will
be available there and at laserfaq.de
in the future.
- The chapters on solid state lasers have progressed significantly and there
is now a separate one on Complete SS Laser Power
Supply Schematics with complete systems suitable for driving the pulsed
ruby and YAG laser heads common on the surplus market.
- A couple of really ancient versions of Sam's Laser FAQ and a link to
another one have been collected at the
Sam's Laser FAQ Archive
just to offer an idea of how this collection evolved. If nothing else, it
beats counting sheep for insomnia. :)
- Copyright notices have been added to the start and end of all text files.
I did this after finding bits and pieces of Sam's Laser FAQ at random
Web sites around the World with no mention of origin or author and dead
links to pages that might have had these attributions.
In addition to many general additions and enhancements in virtually all areas,
the following may be noteworthy:
In addition to many general additions and enhancements in virtually all areas,
the following may be noteworthy:
- The chapters on Solid State Lasers and
SS Laser Power Supplies have finally
arrived (though they are somewhat sparsely filled in at present). Stay
tuned. :)
- There are several sections in the chapters on
Helium-Neon Lasers and
Home-Built Helium-Neon Laser describing
the use of HeNe laser tubes with one or two Brewster windows for the
construction of external mirror HeNe lasers using readily available
components.
- Schematics have been added for several new HeNe laser power supplies as
well as a couple of argon ion laser heads (including the very common
Cyonics/Uniphase 2214).
- The information on Helium-Cadmium Lasers
has been consolidated into a chapter of its own.
- One of the new wings of the Laser Equipment
Gallery presents the dissection of a green laser pointer based on diode
pumped solid state frequency doubled technology. Don't miss out on all the
exciting (and gory) details! :)
In addition to many general additions and enhancements in virtually all areas,
the following may be noteworthy:
In addition to many general additions and enhancements in virtually all areas,
the following may be noteworthy:
- The Comprehensive Table of Contents now provides
Direct links to every chapter and section from one Web page.
- Several more ion laser schematics have been added including a couple of
basic power supply designs that are easy to build as well as the circuit
diagram of the quite common NEC GLG-3030 laser head.
- Several chapters including the one on home-built lasers (that was quite
bloated) have been split to decrease loading times.
- Several new wings have been added to the
Laser Equipment Gallery including one with
photos of a Coherent 541 flowing gas CO2 laser - essentially a commercial
version of the type of system that can be built by a determined amateur.
In addition to many general additions and enhancements, the following may be
noteworthy:
- The Laser Equipment Gallery has been
expanded to include photos of a large CW YAG laser, "BUGBLASTER SR", a larger
HeNe laser, and some other miscellaneous laser bits. :-)
- The general organization of some material has been improved and Sub ToCs
now provide links to all sections, not just major topic headings.
- Argon and Krypton Ion Lasers are now covered in great detail
providing the only known readily accessible detailed discussion of their
characteristics and maintenance, as well as power supply requirements and
system design considerations for these very desirable devices. There are
even complete schematics for several different Ar/Kr ion laser power supplies!
- Two complete chapters provide extensive information on Amateur Laser
Construction including material from the Scientific American collection
"Light and its Uses" as well as the email, Web sites, articles, and
experiences of those who have been successful in building their own lasers
from scratch (not taking the easy way out and using commercial tubes or laser
diodes!) and getting them to work - or have given it their best shot trying!
Also included: basics of vacuum systems and glass working, where to get
strange parts, the well equipped home laser lab, and much much more.
- A chapter on Carbon Dioxide Lasers is included as well.
- The text formatting has also been greatly improved including a complete
Sub-Table of Contents for each chapter and intra-FAQ hot links that now work!
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