Detroit trip
I woke up at 3 am Friday to fly to Detroit to meet the Trumpf laser guys and run some tests. It turns out that in 2008, an 8 kilowatt* diode-pumped infrared laser is about the size of a compact car, with a 25-foot garden hose coming out of one end. The "garden hose" is a shielded fiber optic cable that carries the actual light beam coming out, and it fits into connectors held by robot arms or whatever else you want to hold the laser.
We wore special tinted goggles, but needed no other safety equipment as long as the beam wasn't tightly focused. A 9" diameter test beam using a fraction of maximum power did fun things to aluminum, solar cells, and plastic, and showed up brightly to digital camera sensors watching reflections from ~10 feet away. We couldn't see the beam at all.
We got some good data, though not as much as I'd like. The flight back was delayed, and I didn't get home till 1am Saturday morning. I got some exercise walking back and forth the length of the Detroit Airport for a few hours, so it wasn't all bad. (Yay for $1.40 Taco Bell bean burritos, the cheapest dinner I've ever bought in an airport)
*~30 kilowatts of electrical power input, 8 kilowatts of laser light out.
We wore special tinted goggles, but needed no other safety equipment as long as the beam wasn't tightly focused. A 9" diameter test beam using a fraction of maximum power did fun things to aluminum, solar cells, and plastic, and showed up brightly to digital camera sensors watching reflections from ~10 feet away. We couldn't see the beam at all.
We got some good data, though not as much as I'd like. The flight back was delayed, and I didn't get home till 1am Saturday morning. I got some exercise walking back and forth the length of the Detroit Airport for a few hours, so it wasn't all bad. (Yay for $1.40 Taco Bell bean burritos, the cheapest dinner I've ever bought in an airport)
*~30 kilowatts of electrical power input, 8 kilowatts of laser light out.