Luxar Cooling Optics Gallery

The LUXAR RF Excited Waveguide CO2 Laser

So you got a LUXAR RF Excited OEM Waveguide CO2 Laser on ebay

I did too. I am quite happy for paying $1,000 but hopefully you did better. Us ebay hamsters have to stick together. I am using my CO2 laser for home CNC activities, and hope to get into laser surgury. On with what I know so far...

Focal length, spot size, and power density

This site: www.parallax-tech.com has lots of stuff. One thing they have is a FAQ

From the equations on the FAQ I was able to create the following table, assume the luxor has a beam width of 3.8mm.

Focal lengthSpot sizeDOFPower density
0.5043.40.313471.1
0.7565.20.75987.2
1.0086.91.23367.8
1.50130.32.71496.8
2.00173.84.8841.9
3.00260.710.9374.2
4.00347.619.3210.5
5.00434.530.2134.7
6.00521.443.493.5

The Pinout Diagram

This is a diagram that is only a sketch but should be enough to use the laser. The luxar has a little circuit board. The only inputs are 28volts, and +/- for TTL logic. One of the nice things about the device is you can control the power output of the beam by varying a pulse-width-modulated wave from 0-25khz. Or you you can just tie the +5v to high and it will run on continuous power.

If the above does not makes find a friend to help. If the above does not make sense and you still want to run the laser, disconnect the white plug to the circuit board, and apply 28volts to that. As the pinout diagram shows the white wire is negative, the blue wire is positive.

Device specs

Okay, the ebay seller is pretty good, but I think he munged some information on his page concerning the specs for the luxar. Specifically, I think the beam size is wrong, the information on the polarization was munged, and the his remark on the coolant water was munged. Here are the revised specs:
Wavelength: 10.6 µm Fixed
Rated Power: 20W
Power Stability: <+/- 2%
Mode: >95%TEMoo
Beam Size: ~3.8mm
Beam Divergence: <5.0 mRad full angle
Beam Quality: M2<1.3>
Polarization: >100 to 1 Fixed Linear
Modulation: TTL up to 25Khz
Supply: 24-28Vdc @ 6A
Heat load (W, max) 150
Flow Rate >2 gpm
Temperature 5-30°C
Coolant Water + 25% Dow Frost Coolant
The reason I think this is incorrect because of a pdf file I found described below. The original ebay listing had some product information that included the phrase "Ruggedized for the most severe industrial environments". If you search google using this phrase you'll find a pdf which you can download here (1.6Meg). This is for a different laser, obviously, but I think ultimately the luxar is pretty much the same device, and we're just looking at the same laser except the one in the pdf is a larger wattage. Its a guess, but I think just a couple bits of information were dropped when the html for the ebay laser went up. There were probably some translation problems which the seller didnt notice.

One thing that would be really useful is to know the remark "5-30°C" is actual 15-30 operating temperature. I really dont want to have to bring the coolant below room temperature to make this thing work at optimum. I would also like to know if that heat load of 150 watts is correct. I would hazard a guess that its actually 1500. True for other lasers of this size.

Power supplies

Some sites:

  • This is what I am currently (get it?!) using (pdf)
  • Surplus sales
  • A pdf of allied electric.
  • Another site.
  • Another site.

    Rumor-mongering: What ever happend to Luxar?

    Yeah, when I got my laser, I was hot to find more information too. I did a lot of looking around already. The original company Luxar was bought up, two times over, once by DEOS, once by Coherent, then half of Coherent was bought by Lumenis, only the medical side.

    You can get all this because they put stuff in their press release archives, like:

    http://www.lumenis.com/site/content/investor/releases/archive/2001/index.asp

    if you go to the Coherent site, you can see some lasers that are veeRRRRrrry much like ours.

    http://www.cohr.com/Products/index.cfm?fuseaction=Interfaces.ProductLine&PCID=23&PLID=38

    So anyway I called a guy at Luminus, he told me there's no information remaining at all for Luxar products. He said that based on the number that's on the ebay listing it is -not- medical equipment, but was actually from the Luxar industrial part. I think he also did not know a lot about what he was talking about.

    I think if there's any more information on the Luxar the only thing would be to start hitting the laser news.groups and find someone that either owned a luxar or used to work there. I also heard from the Synrad salesman that Luxar is the result of a (Laakman) divorcing, where he took Synrad, and his wife took the medical division, Luxar.

    Other links

    This site:
  • www.emissiontechnologies.com
    Rocks. They have laser kits and power supplies.
  • Emission's CO2 Cutting Nozzle
    An exceptionally useful item that I might get. Its shipped with a 3 inch focal length lens, btw.
  • Emission's X-Y Gantry Cutter
    An inspiration to thems of us making cutting tables. My one comment about the set up is that I wouldnt go with some of their hardware that handles movement. The belts lose some accuracy, and it looks like they use steppers which usually just give around 200 steps per inch. Since they're cutting things of a relatively large format 200 dpi would be alright. But at that resolution close inspection of engravings would show jaggies on diagonal lines. However, the price really is astonishing. They cant be in it for the money.
  • I have a cnc table too. But its not for sale.
  • Here is a collection of price quotes.
  • My personal web site Nilno generally makes no sense, but simply exists to store informtation like this page.
  • No list of laser links would be complete without: Sams Laser FAQ
  • And the groovy usenet group, alt.lasers

    Would you like a list of sites that all have unaffordable lasers?
  • Franek laser
  • DNA equipment
  • Used Lasers
  • EOL Surplus
  • My supplier
  • Laser resale