The spiral glass tube in the bottom of the tube makes the gas return path longer than the bore, ensuring that the plasma wont ignite outside of the bore

Nice find!

please make more teardown like this we miss this kind of videos of you !! great job as allways!!

Lens sounds car alarm, interesting

I have a similar unit, but uses fluorinert cooling as cooling circuit is "live". That big ring looks like camera mount.

Stoked to see another video - you're one of my favourite channels!

Awesome video! Can't wait to see what use you find for it.

Just fascinating how much money and effort went into that machine, always cool to see fancy tech from the past!

Some of the CO2 is broken down into CO in the arc. I THINK the purpose of the glass spiral is to allow more time for recombination into CO2 (via interaction with a small amount of water vapor added to the gas fill). It may also double as a high resistance path, so the arc doesn't strike on the outside of the bore.

Love the construction of the technology from this sort of time. No rounded corners, or blinding ugly blue LED's, no 'friendly' messages on a crappy touch-screen saying things like 'Whoops! Something wen't wrong!" Just professional, clean, and functional.

Pink color observed on the internal surface of CO2 lasers is a thin layer of gold, either deposited intentionally or as a result of deposition from a gold catalyst during operation over time. Your observation of the short-period axial rings within the tube indicates to me that this was intentional deposition; the cavity has been scribed to remove the gold coating to create electrically isolated regions of the gold film to ensure the voltage gradient within that island is less than the cathode voltage drop. The first CO2 lasers were what are called "flowing gas" lasers. The discharge process breaks the CO2 down to CO and O2, which poisons the lasing. So, originally, the solution was to continuously flow CO2 in from one side of the cavity and extract it from the opposite side. Then it was discovered that gold can be used as a low temperature catalyst at low pressures to significantly enhance the speed at which CO2 is reformed within the cavity, allowing for a completely sealed laser. See DOI 10.1109/3.29314 "CO2 laser performance with a distributed gold catalyst" John A. Macken 1989 for details.

Nice find! Also nice Comair Rotron fans at 8:36!

can you scan the schematics? should be interesting see the circuit diagram!

I wonder if the lack of screws on the external panels was so that it could be scrubbed down for a sterile environment without having to worry about germs hiding in the tiny crevices of a screw head. I don't know much about medical device technology but when dealing with something that you can't put in an autoclave, it seems like extra attention to detail is required.

Hotwiring a medical grade laser apparatus LOL I love it :D

+1 because Trixy makes an appearance.

got a 90W medical laser recently, had over current protection error too on startup.. was just a loose bodge wire. It was 810nm and 3x30W diodes with watercooling everything crammed into a 50x30x15cm case. interessting device, did some burning tests and then sold it again for huge profit. the foot pedal was pneumatic and it didnt had isolation transformer inside.

Hi! Super Pulse is a term used for "triangular" like pulses, that reduce thermal damage to the tissue, while keeping average power output high(peaks of the triangles higher than the square pulse ones). Also, super nice find, and video.

The HV supply components with the gold heat sinks appear to be diodes in a full wave bridge, there are then filter caps, an isolation transformer and the power MOSFET is probably switching those potted inductors in a flyback transformer arrangement to generate the HV.

the interior of the glow discharge tube is coated with a sputtered gold catalyst. this is literally pure gold, which is in a monetarily inconsequential amount, which allows for CO and free O to recombine catalytically, to drive the CO2 concentration up. It simply allows one to drive the laser current higher without losing power due to CO2 dissociation. The sputter method of deposition leaves bands of fuzzy pink/gray gold in discontinuous patches which cannot short the axial current flow. There are better ways to deposit the gold catalyst, but never mind that. It's possible that the sputtered gold was "scratched" or cleaned so that accidentally "heavy" coatings did not short the discharge current. Another one of your videos shows a wired wrapped (apparently) around the outside of the discharge tube, and that is a mystery to me. The spiral tube leads to the ballast laser mix volume which has been manufactured to be surrounding the discharge tube/cooling tube for mechanical simplicity and stability. Since a discharge of CO2 creates CO and free O, fresh CO2 needs to be replenished as things like cold cathodes oxidize, hence the ballast volume. As this is a gradual process, there need not be better gas communication than a spiral tube. For sure there should be a greater path length between the cold cathode's HV and anything else it could discharge to associated with the ballast. Again the patchy/periodic discoloration on the interior of the discharge tube is sputtered gold catalyst (pure metallic Au) in quantities not worth thinking about. Oxidized Au is pink in the very fine "islands" of gold particles, and the reduced form looks gray. This can change dramatically if operated in a flowing configuration by adding trace H2O. The catalyst can be activated or deactivated in this way, changing the catalyst color and the discharge color from a nitrogen pink to a CO white. It's very striking. Stop burning targets laid on the output coupler! Good god! Also, am I seeing people without appropriate eye safety gear? No joke. Aligning the articulated arm - give up now. I've seen techs who specialize in this and it's highly non-trivial. You somehow got the damaged elbow fixed - good for you! Very lucky. Next, please stop touching all the electronic components with your fingers. Gesture with a non-conductive utensil. Intentionally opening an oil-filled HVPS. What can I say? I would hope you consider telling your audience to NOT just casually buy things like lasers at auction and mess around with them. There are so many things in a laser that can kill, maim and blind, and I haven't seen you showing good HV sterility behavior. This is super-dangerous stuff in terms of electrocution, and should someone catch a glint of laser, it can easily cause lesions on the retina, or the cornea, depending on wavelength. Give people a warming regularly please.

Perfect content. Would it be possible to enable video stabilization? In extream dizziness, I managed to still love your video.

really awesome!!

Epic stuff, what a scrap yard find! Wouldn't half mind a CO2 like that in my lab.

I installed two similar linear PSUs like that in my custom modular synthesizer cabinet.

superb!

BTW, The spiral part of the tube is a co2 gas return tube, as it's a flowing gas co2 laser.

Man, I've got to know which scrap yard you find all these goodies at. I see that laser delivery arm, and can't help but think laser pantograph.

cutest Allen wrench set ever

laser etching don't even lie... you have plans on making an ion cannon

The coolest thing about this video is that you have David Gilmour as a patreon :P

60W of thumbs up right there

That high voltage power supply, is probably some sort of resonant converter type; using it to charge up capacitors for the laser to discharge

WOW! Do they really need all that circuitry?

Mirror coating is most likely gold, like the James Webb mirrors, reflect IR most prodigiously.

Quite interesting. Any chance we can see more of the arm design you described?

I kind of want one of these lasers now. Though ill probably finish my homebrew CO2 laser before i can get one. (the homebrew laser is going to take a while, since im working on other projects right now)

wow! what an awesome device! #everyday

Nice tear down. Partly because of the relatively low volumes, and partly because of the industry mentality, deep pockets, and high barriers to entry, high tech medical equipment is often very interesting and often surprisingly poorly designed and/or rather crude and DIY-ish. I've not seen many medical tear downs where I would have ever been proud to be part of the design team. A $49 prepaid no-name smart phone is usually much better engineered overall. But it's all about volume and competition or the lack of both.

most elaborate cat toy ever

It is called an impedance tube. Photon 939 is correct.

how much did this cost at the junkyard

Fancy woodburner you got there.

A fun night out with the boys that must've been xD

The spiral increases the patrh length of the discharge so hatit akes the shorter (and hotter) path through the4 fenter of rthe resonaator tuber. The gas reeroir has tro be in ontract with the ischarge area to keep the nitrogn helium DO2 mix refreshed.

Does it burn?

Those door interlock switches are quite common on HVAC equipment doors like small oil furnaces in mobile homes.

That's made where I live!!!

Hah! That's the booger the credit-card processor circut landed on in the latest WIM video!

not sure if I ever had seen a teardown with more than 1 person. seemed to have worked well though.

More on that!!!

nice junkyard score!

Fancy laser!

"While waiting for the screens for the camera to show up, I got bored and..." **LASER!** ? :) Edit: Also.. Pretty laser! The big glass tubes look so nice lit up!

Can you buy these things in the US without any license?

Laser dot detector works well, your cat found it 😅❤

The oil in the high voltage transformer could be PCBs and not good for your health. Very expensive to dispose of. Cheers Dave

Did this cost you anything?

What are you doing?! Call Surgilase!!

9:02 Minecraft switch sound :)

Laser output window is probably damaged now. objects that burn and produce smoke and carbon should never be placed near the laser output. The smoke or carbon could absorb the CO2 wavelength and severely damage the ZnSe window. white smoke is less dangerous, black smoke -> good luck with your laser. :)

and remember: do not look into laser with last remaining eye.

Nice, just nice, that's all.

Are those capacitors live?

could you not use it for welding or for LASER soldering I hope that you are are going to reassemble that unit after the teardown and just fix the bad component to get the unit working as I think that it would be a bad idea to totally disassemble that unit when it would make a really useful tool for soldering components with actually touching them or welding broken items together.

no idea why im watching this, but i guess it's quite interesting :)

Sealed it with MIL-A-46146...very expensive stuff

Laser soldering?

How much did you pay for that unit

in the compartment that had the arm has a reset button why u no press

13:45 Applied Science has a ruby laser that looks very similar. The spiral bit of glass is used to excite the atoms in the rod to produce the laser. I'm not sure why it's open on one end though. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jLmUiLRl1LSvmX0.html

You never dida an update on this laser! Every video you make is about something cool but you make them soooo rarely :(

Dude!! Awesome!!! When I watch a video like this... I realize at the ripe old age of 34 that smoking weed my entire adult life to this point has been a massive waste of time... I don't understand 90% of this but holy fuck it's cool!!!!!! I gotta lay off the dope... KIDS! Don't Do Drugs!!!

dude burn more stuff??

400 nanometer not mm. It's a wavelenght filter

aaahh, the call for service 31 error, you're out of red laser fluid.

AIR PURGE!

Just my opinion - stop tearing things down as a matter of course. Yes you get obscure error codes, but the chances of more than one thing being wrong (or even complex) is very low. You're very close to having functional lasers at first power-on. Most typical failure modes for CO2 medical lasers (with "enough" hours on them - see the Hobbs meter), low gas fill. Give it a recharge. Sub-circuit failure, where some fuse is tripped for a silly reason (water reservoir got a bit too warm). POST tests, which is where you see your failures, are checking for operational sequence failures. One must have a manual for this unless you're much sharper than I am. Do nothing with that delivery arm cattywhompus. CO2 lasers are among the most robust and simple gas discharge lasers, so you have some chance getting them running with your own power supply, but for sure, other more exotic lasers like argon, fiber laser etc - much much more complex, requiring rather exotic test equipment. Good luck.

Now I know why those co2 lasers cost so much on ebay their huge