Shooting Down Satellites.

I did my first laser test today, with great success!
Here's what I've done over the last few days:
Laser mirrors fron a harddrive platter. I had my doubts but I thought, what do I have to loose? And I can report: it works!
I masking tapped both sides of a newly discected hard drisk, clamped between two sheets of Melemine chipboard and cut with a bimetal holesaw...carefully.

Here is a picture of the mirror on the plate from the top of the flying head.

I decided I need a visual referance that all the bits and pieces were switched on, pump, compressor, laser power supply and extraction(when ever I get around to that one!)
I spotted this switched splitter with neons in Tesco for €11.50 so I decided to go for it. It will save alot of wiring and switches.

For the cooling of the laser cutter I got a large tub from my local vet (Avondale Veteranary "A great place to get your balls cut off") I would think its at least 30 litres.
I decided to go mad and get electrical cable glands to try seal the tub all together, they are a very neat, sealed system for this kind of thing.

 

The pump I'm trying is a 10euro campervan water pump. It will pump at least 2.5m head. At 14lpm it should be plenty of flow to keep the 40watt laser cool. I got that pump on Ebay from the UK.

That jubalee clip, by the way is a stainless steel as it will be submerged.

Fantastic Laser Tube

Here is the lovely 40W laser tube. Chinese made and very beautiful. I love vacuum tube technology, in what ever form it comes. It is such an overt display of the incredible physics that are going on inside. Nowadays it all happens in SMDs or BGAs or some other little black blob of plastic.

 

So a brief description:

High reflector seems to be gold coated and the output coupler germanium. The electrodes I assume are nickle, judging from their colour and catalytic effect it would have.
Strangely the water cooling for the Ge is in a glass structure. I would have thought this fiddly bit of work would more easily be done in metal, not to mention the fact that glass is an insulator.

 

Anyway at this stage I trust the Chinese as the made most of the things I own!
As you may know this tube is: gas discharge tube in the centre surrounded by a water jacket which is itself surrounded by the gas reservoir. How the hell are these made? Respect to the crafts men and women involved.

So to mount the tube I needed its centre to be 115mm above the top of the frame. I have made two assumptions here (which normally turn out to be wrong...)
 1. There will be no vibration.
 2. I don't need triangulation.
 The tube is mounted on 6mm plates bolted to the top of the frame. The cradles are then on adjustable M8 threaded bar, to allow for virtical adjustment.
At this point I should mention that all these heights have been dictated by the mirror on the gantry... but that's another story.
Since this picture I have put some padding for the tube to rest in and centre itself correctly. I made allowances or that cutting the semicircle.