Lasers!

Kevin Clark · 22 Jun 2014 at 21:10

Something a bit different.

I did these for work. It's the laser array in a new flow cytometer we've had installed. The 4 beams are coming in from the left and being focussed through prisms in to a flow cell so they're all horizontally stacked about a millimetre apart.

If you're interested it's F20/22, ISO 100, 8-10s exposure in a completely dark room with me blowing dry ice vapour over it to pick the beams out but I'm not in the picture long enough or bright enough to be seen. The violet laser at the top is quite close to UV in wavelength so not as easy to see as the other three.

Vertigo · 22 Jun 2014 at 21:25

Cool!

Hyburnate · 22 Jun 2014 at 21:26

I was expecting someone to have deemed their sensor FUBAR but this is much much cooler :cool:

Andy90 · 23 Jun 2014 at 16:05

Very Darkside of the Moonish

john_s · 24 Jun 2014 at 08:12

Nice!

I'd not noticed the violet laser until I read your text and looked again!

SickAsAParrot · 24 Jun 2014 at 08:16

Why does the green one go through an extra kink?

snips86x · 24 Jun 2014 at 08:16

Hyburnate said:
I was expecting someone to have deemed their sensor FUBAR but this is much much cooler

This is what I thought too!

Very nice by the way!

413x · 24 Jun 2014 at 10:29

I used a flow cytometer quite a lot

Alas my lasers were all locked away with 'warranty void if removed' on the covers

redline · 24 Jun 2014 at 11:42

Cool stuff... and I had to look it up, but I now know what a cytometer does; well sort of

Sh4rkie · 24 Jun 2014 at 13:37

Very cool stuff

Kevin Clark · 24 Jun 2014 at 21:49

Thanks

SickAsAParrot said:
Why does the green one go through an extra kink?

There isn't really enough room to get all of the fibre mounts in to guide them in a straight line. The mounts have 3 directional adjustments on them which makes them relatively bulky so you need some space to get to them.

The yellow/green laser is the brightest so they can afford to lose a little bit of signal by running it through a prism to get the angle right.

Alas my lasers were all locked away with 'warranty void if removed' on the covers

I asked the engineer to leave the covers off for the night so I could do it before he finished the installation the day after

We do tend to do a lot of tinkering ourselves though. He said the pics were better than the official ones but sadly didn't want to buy them in exchange for another £300k cytometer!!

crinkleshoes · 25 Jun 2014 at 00:43

Gorgeous

DoneADougalOnSofa · 25 Jun 2014 at 00:46

I want one for my 540

413x · 25 Jun 2014 at 07:34

Kevin Clark said:
Thanks

There isn't really enough room to get all of the fibre mounts in to guide them in a straight line. The mounts have 3 directional adjustments on them which makes them relatively bulky so you need some space to get to them.

The yellow/green laser is the brightest so they can afford to lose a little bit of signal by running it through a prism to get the angle right.

I asked the engineer to leave the covers off for the night so I could do it before he finished the installation the day after We do tend to do a lot of tinkering ourselves though. He said the pics were better than the official ones but sadly didn't want to buy them in exchange for another £300k cytometer!!

Yeah they arent cheap are they
I remember the X ray crystallography equipment I used to use was like that
But It's been a while now since I was doing science. Gave it all up

Rojin · 26 Jun 2014 at 09:28

That's really cool, nice work and thanks for sharing