I would like to lead a class in assembling your own helium-neon laser. We have the choice of several types of kits, depending on how complex we want this project to be and how much we want to spend. I believe I can get helium-neon tubes for $50; the power supply might cost another $50. Assembly is not much more complicated than attaching leads from the power supply to the tube.
I would like to know how many people would like to assemble their own helium-neon laser for about $100.
Um… Hells Yeah. Fun in a box.
I’d sign up also…
Out of curiosity, how powerful of a laser are we talking about? Like, what does one do with a helium-neon laser?
Helium-Neon (or “HeNe”) lasers are not very powerful, and they are not very efficient. These lasers that we would be building would be between 1 mW and 2 mW. However, until recently, helium-neon lasers were the workhorse of the photonics industry, appearing in just about every device that needed a visible laser. They are fairly inexpensive (for their time), simple and reliable. Today, they have been almost entirely replaced by semiconductor lasers, but the HeNe was the most common laser in the world for about thirty years.
Just about everything that we could do with a HeNe, we could do with a semiconductor laser, for less money, more easily and with less risk of breakage. However, that’s more-or-less true of most gas lasers, of which the HeNe is one example of the type.
I do plan to conduct experiments using the HeNe, and then repeating those experiments with a semiconductor laser that I also hope we will assemble. This will give us a comparison between types of lasers. I hope that we will assemble several types of lasers and conduct experiments with them. These first few would be the less-expensive varieties of lasers.
I’ve worked out that the components we need will cost about $75, plus the 15% that DMS gets, plus Eventbrite fee, comes out to $90. I need to have that money from everyone who wants to build this laser, so I can place single orders with the companies involved.
This is the kit we are buying:
http://repairfaq.cis.upenn.edu/Misc/sale/henelsk1.htm
That kit needs an additional 24 V power supply and a base plate for mounting (I’ve included the cost of these components in the $75). I don’t know what we will do for the base plate, but I suspect we might find a way of making one.
How much time do you need to come up with $90?
What can this laser do?
It creates a stable beam of monochromatic light that can be used in interferometry, optical communication and holography, with suitable accessories and skill. These particular lasers came from grocery store bar code reading machines.