Argon Laser 40 mW Blue Laser, multi-line. Unusual in that it has multiple spectral lines. Of course these days, simple handheld diode lasers can be much brighter than this. The power supply and control unit are on the left and the head unit with fan on top. The beam is highlighted by a water spray. I love electronics with a key start.
“Continue reading” for more details and 9 photos.
This is a Cyonics Uniphase 2201RD-40MLA Argon laser from eBay. Nice bright sky blue beam which is nominally rated at 40 mW. Draws 10 A at 110 V but can be turned down to about 5 mW and draws 5 A.
My $10 UK Army goggles block it almost completely.
The beam out of my shed with a 10 mW HeNe laser for comparison.
The beam has been split with a diffraction grating and shows the multiple spectral lines from violet on the left (not well reproduced with the camera), to blue (488 nm) to green (514.5 nm) on the right. The green component is shown passing through fluorescein which is selectively allowing the green to go through.
Minute holes and a small line can be cut in a black plastic garbage bag liner with this laser. The 40 mW is only just powerful enough for this.
The right photo shows the set-up with a focusing lens to do this. Interestingly the sun focused through the same lens does not burn plastic. The lens aperture is 6 mm so only 20 mW is produced by sunlight assuming 1 kW/m2.
An interesting effect can be made by passing the beam through some hazy polyethylene sheet resulting in the beam becoming diffracted and diffused. The multicoloured lines separate into a mosaic of blue and green dots. When projected on to a 4 foot white disc (a polystyrene table packing cover) one can get unusual effects.
You can do cool hand shadows. There is Coke can at the bottom for scale.
Hold a lens in the beam at just the level for the beam to be expanded to exclude the shadow from the lens surround.
I am staring into a 40 mW laser here. Can you see the smoke coming off my retina? The centre photo shows the effect of using a 10 mW HeNe red laser similarly set up. The right photo shows the effect of both the blue argon and the red HeNe red lasers together which gives the irritating effect of those old 3D pictures to be viewed with blue and red cellophane glasses. In fact there is a 3D effect using those glasses.
Related pages
Argon lasers with Galvanometers
Try something else
Low voltage high current
External links
Argon Laser – Wiki
Argon laser Google+ post: Mar 24, 2012
Photo Date: 2006