My sweet sweet Argon project... she still needs refining before I take her home to meet the parents, but she is beautiful. That's not to say I have low standards, I just appreciate the good parts more than I should.
A Littman-Metcalf grating feedback system used to selectively tune the lasers. It's like dangling candy in front of a baby: she'll follow you around the wavelengths for only so long before she gives up, but once she gets her candy, that's all she thinks about.
Moral: Lasers are fickle.
The laser being absorbed and re-emitted by an Argon discharge. This is the beautiful part.
Control boxes and electronics to convince the laser that maybe it does want to run on-resonance after all. You have to let it decide for itself, though; there's only so much coaching you can do.
An early setup for the mirror optics used for steering the laser beams all over town.
Optics used to measure various properties of the discharge. The hard part is steering both beams through the optics and still threading the aperture at the end of the line. As my old man says, "No pain, no gain". (A good pun for my fellow laser jocks, eh? Maybe not.)
Artsy shot across the backside of the optics looking towards one of the beam sources. Lasers like artwork
This is what a healthy laser profile is supposed to look like; at least, no body has told me otherwise, yet. (That's an absorbtion profile through the Argon discharge as the laser wavelength is scanned through a small area.) See Ma, she's a healthy young laser, and she doesn't smoke. You would like her if you met her.
The new laser on the table is Big Sister Ti:Saph. See that perdy green Argon Ion pump beam? It's a good 5 to 6 Watts CW on a good date night. And the Ti:Saph crystal sure gives off a cheeky red flourescence. We get a good 150 to 200 mW tunable infrared out of the laser cavity. Darn thing sure is picky about tuning, but more (emotionally) stable than those little diode lasers. If I weren't paying the bills, and I'm not, that Argon Ion - Ti:Saph combo is wonderful.