I found 2 of the Uniphase He-Ne tubes, I'll try one on an NST some time. The invisible radiation always had me worried, amazing they can pop balloons too!
I keep a lot of lamps, motors, shafts, bearings, belts, pulleys etc.. although a lot of this machine will end up as scrap since I'm already overstocked with parts.
I've played with the lasers before and they don't emit a visible beam like the conventional diodes I had as a kid. i've never really looked into what these could be used for, any suggestions? now gas lasers are cool!, i had a few from old supermarket scanners years ago, not sure where they are now. must ahve been an ancient Xerox ot use a gas laser
I would keep so many things from a copier like this. lights, fans, motors, circuit boards, computers, hard drives anything I can make use of. I dismantled an old flatbed scanner and it had one of those CCFL lights in the scanning head. I made an emergency light out of it for power outages and man did it come in handy.
@AwesomeDude775 I've never really found a universal driver for these LCD's :( I have been invited to scrap a 1 year old chinese thermo-forming machine that has a color touch screen monitor on it, I shall try and use that for a portable tablet type system.
Yeah, I've had many sad days like that, no matter how hard you try you can't move that 250kg copier or AC unit :( best bet is to hire a trailer and visit a copier repair shop. just tell them your a hobbyist and you want a busted large copier to play with, they usually have dozens to get rid of!
One day I did find a big copier waiting for its fate in the street... but I could not pick it up in my car because it was too large and heavy :'( what a sad day it was... since I had my revenge and did disassemble several copiers, however smaller ones, I'm still waiting for the Big one...
yeah it was about 15 years ago and it was an old looking unit at the time... be cool if you could find those supermarket scanner gas tubes... ive seen those invisible beams popping balloons-you could possibly view it thru a digital camera wich is more sensitive to light we cant see-be careful tho-as invisible beam is way more dangerous than a visible beam
secret life of photocopiers.....are you gonna pull out the laser diode and put 3 volts across it? i found an old xerox laser copier with a gas laser once-ran it off aN NST until it burnt out
