xenon flash tubes?

i can't find anything with a quick search, so has anybody considered using a parabolic dish, some large fast charge capacitors and a xenon flash tube (probably the bulb shaped ones, just to make focusing easier, unless somebody has a good idea for focusing a long tube shape into a point?) to melt powders? it's my understanding that these tubes are involved in some of the largest lasers on earth, surely they can melt a little metal? the only downside i can see is you couldn't run one of these in your room anymore, as a flash that when focused melts metal would probably be annoying as hell unfocused.

... when charging lasers, the 'focussing' is made by the laser-rod and the resonator mirrors with the wavelength of the laser.

If you want to use only the energy of the flash (which is much more than the resulting laser output), then you can only achieve a roughly 1:1 representation of the emitting bulb-shape - what's in the best case a line of some millimetres width and the length of the bulb on the surface, not a spot.

For heating and melting with Halogen-spotlights you need a special designed lamp with a really small and short emitting area and a corresponding parabolic mirror - with this 'optical heads' you can have until some hundred Watts on a spot of maybe 3mm diameter, but the common heads are in the price range of some thousand Euros, so not really DIY-like

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Viktor
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If you want to use only the energy of the flash (which is much more than the resulting laser output), then you can only achieve a roughly 1:1 representation of the emitting bulb-shape - what's in the best case a line of some millimetres width and the length of the bulb on the surface, not a spot.



Where would be a good place to find information on this

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Random Precision

... it's shown in some datasheets or lectures of lamp pumped lasers.

Here some infos for soldering with light: [www.atn-berlin.de]

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Viktor
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Thanks Parker for starting this thread, and Viktor for the link,
Opens up a whole lot of possibilities.

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Random Precision

Hi John,

... have you read through the PDF "more details"?

There is stated: - with a lamp of 250Watts you'll receive 10-15Watts output power on a spot of 3mm ... and the durability/lefetime is with 50-100 hours really poor! The prices for the right lamps and focussing heads are in the range of hundred to thousand Euros too!

With an 9Watt-IR-diodelaser with 975nm (in the same wavelenght-range) for around 300 Euros (new, i've sold scavenged 'naked' 5Watt-diodes for 80 Euros and received last week some 9Watt-diodes too) you'll have 9Watts in a spot of 0.1mm or with defocussing you can make the spot bigger for soldering only.

So with actual IR-diodes you'll have a much more efficient device ... and it will be cheaper, more usefull, and with lifetimes in the range of 10000's hours ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Viktor,
Yes you are right about the downfalls, but I am looking for something for the powderbed printer project,
at first is will be binder and gypsum or such like, but later hope to make it polymer powder with ir lamp, so this sort of fits in
with my need to melt the powder over a bigger area.

I have seen pulsed IR lamps used for this, so will be asking you some questions at a later date if thats OK.

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Random Precision

Hi John,

... don't hesitate to ask

I have two quartz-glass tubes with embedded tungsten wire from a toaster - they're running with 230Volts AC in serie and emits light-orange/yellow, what's mirrored across the inner volume with thin steel-mirrors (the inner housing), and so will heat the complete surface of the toast-bread homogene ... maybe a good finding for heating a complete area as in 'Inhibition sintering'.

Some of my testing with the IR-diodes is for selective powderbed sintering - here i'm testing with different powders, materials, wavelengths and power-density. One of the most promising materials could be lignin-powder from Tecnaro

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Viktor,
Sorry to hijack this thread, the toaster units sound interesting, and about the right size, I shall look into
getting some, I have some halogen units from those heaters that rotate, 3 at 400kw, but they are long, about 300mm.

I planned to have a heat line that travels across with the recoater, and use the opposite to 'Inhibition sintering'. if that makes sense, so the xenon thing sounds interesting.

Yes the lignin-powder does look good, so much to do and not enough time.

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Random Precision