High Performance Flash Lamps

[@styropyro]

Such a good video, I learned a bunch from watching! I'm so jealous of your lab...I'd love to have the ability to make my own lamps and mess with design parameters.

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

dude, do a collab with these guys! or just move to live in their lab.

[@roscomcfarland204]

Bro what? Styropyro commented on your video?

[@motogee3796]

Hi Styropyro, clearly you are very gifted when it comes to building electronics stuff. It would be great if you could look into devices that enhance the human well being (like Rife devices) including specifically the null point energy sources.

[@pixelpatter01]

This was a great video. I would suggest you turn off whatever is making that noise while you're video recording.

[@hunterd78]

the things making the noise are needed to make the whole thing work

[@tek4]

Vacuum pump

[@DerekWoolverton]

As someone else mentioned thoriated tungsten from a microwave, there are numerous variations on this available: lanthinated, ceriated, etc. all for TIG welding. A brass fitting with a 1/8 hole through the middle with the tungsten welding rod inserted seems like it would be a $5 solution. Larger diameters are available as well, though not as common. I have boxes of electrodes from 1/16 up to 1/4 that I have collected over the years, as well as a large bar that is about one inch in diameter and about six inches long (a random acquisition from ebay).

[@tobuslieven]

I've been subscribed to Applied Science etc for years, why has this channel only shown up in my feed today? KZbin is baffling. Brilliant videos.

[@TechIngredients]

We are growing very rapidly. We have expanded more than ten fold since the beginning of this year. For the first few years our presence on KZbin was primarily as a repository of videos pertaining to some laser forums we visited. Our interests are much broader than that and now we are sharing those as well.

[@tobuslieven]

That's great news. Really appreciate you sharing how you make stuff.

[@mikeselectricstuff]

Re. the neon transformer - you could use one if you only half-wave rectified it using a single diode from each leg, so the centre ground would be the negative,.

[@misterhat5823]

But, you'd only get half the voltage.

[@MysticalDork]

That's not a huge impediment. You could always use a voltage multiplier to step things up suitably.

[@another1commenter770]

You could pre isolate it with an isolating transformer then Full wave rectify it and tie one dc side to ground. It would leave the ground, this would leave a 0v potential to ground. the next step would be insuring all grounded locations are grounded and not floating at a sporadic voltage due to poor grounding. But after doing all this you might as well us the correct power supply. "You could also fight a bear with a pocket knife if you stab it in spinal cord but there a lot other ways that would be more likely to succeed"

[@YodaWhat]

​@@another1commenter770 ​ - Your isolation transformer would need to be rated for about the same as the FULL output voltage of the NST (neon sign transformer), which would make it a very unlikely item. As a MUCH easier alternative, you could put a high-voltage capacitor into each of the NST outputs, rectify if desired, and ground ANY ONE point of the output circuitry as desired, because the capacitors will provide isolation.

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

When I was younger, I used to make lots of discharge tubes (smaller ones) and I used pretty much exactly the same technique as you described with a silicone tube over the electrode and glass but without the o-ring. Thing is, when you pull gas from the tube, it just seals itself better when atmospheric pressure pushes the silicon against both glass and electrode providing even better seal. I used my home-made wimshurst machine to charge an array of capacitors to power them.

[@SuperAWaC]

the technique you're doing with the nichrome wire is called a marline hitch, it is the same thing often used to make wire looms

[@christopherleubner6633]

The air filled flaslamps are great for very fast pulses useful for coaxial excitation of dye lasers. You can use welder's argon which has Ar at 85% and CO2 at 15%. This is excellent at producing Blue Green and UV wavelengths and fires at a bit higher pressures than air. Commercially made quartz coaxial flashlamps are insanely costly and tbh have little advantage over a home made one other than the need for active gas management.❤

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

I love flash tubes, I've always wanted to make a ruby laser or at least a larger flash lamp but only recently decided to do so, I've got five 2400uf 330V flash caps on the way but haven't come up with a tube yet, making my own sounds rather fun now that I have seen this. I've been playing with a boat load of disposable cameras lately that I got on ebay (60 cameras for $40) and made a capacitor bank with 40 of them, and have been going through flash tubes at an alarming rate🤣. I think I'm pushing them _slightly_ past their rated power lol. I get about three shots before there is a conductive layer of tungsten coating the inside of the tubes or it outright explodes🤣. I've gotten extremely proficient with swapping tubes out, and have gone through a couple trigger circuits as well lol. It's pretty amazing how much light a little tube like that can put out, the light that leaks out the glass ends of the tubes outside of the reflector burns the plastic mounts and circuit board, I have to clean the soot off the tube after each shot or they would only last _two_ shots. I think I need some bigger tubes🤣.

[@dougc3086]

I have to watch 100 times to gain 1% more mental power. LOL I really appreciate your videos; and hope one day you show us how to make an affordable laser cutter that can cut or burn 1/4 inch wood or engrave soft metals over time.

[@TechIngredients]

Thanks! That's a really good suggestion.

[@dougc3086]

After writing this post you mentioned that it is cheaper to buy a laser cutter. ;-( The reason that I wrote this post is that I see people using tap water for example, or by passing safety features when telling other people how they have improved their overseas cheap laser cutter. I know that you can do a much better video, than the current videos that are out there, as far as results and safety. I have watched almost all your videos and I give them "ALL" a thumbs up so that BLUE THUMB reminds me that I have already watched your videos. This is my way to thank you and show my appreciation and it is my way to indicate what videos I have previously watched over the years.

[@daveb5041]

Mikeselectric stuff and styropyro both excellent youtubers...

[@Electronics61]

Great video Great primer on higher power flash lamps.

[@Masterpj555]

Thanks so much for this new video Planters! Can't wait what topic you will be tackling next time. If it helps you should start a patreon to fund the production of more videos!

[@PropellerSteve]

You shorted the capacitor with a screwdriver? Make a discharge stick with some resistance, 50 ohms or such. It makes for a much nicer sustained spark. Love your videos.

[@TechIngredients]

True. Been there, but I was being lazy.😀

[@tek4]

19:11 that's a half hitch, a common way of securing, bundling and lifting in construction

[@ARCSTREAMS]

so are these tubes first vacuumed and then the gas is introduced into them thanks to the vacuum so that the pressure of the gas(s) inside the tube is at the same pressure of the vacuum which was negative and now become positive after gas insertion? or can the gases simply be purged in at normal atmosphere then sealed? yes it is good to chamfer the edge of those rods to prevent the discharges from sputtering the tin sharp edges into the inner wall of the tube embedding into the quarts and creating problems ,it will at least give longer life before such build up happens

[@TechIngredients]

The tubes are evacuated then air or other gasses can be allowed to enter to a desired pressure which can be sub atmospheric or up to several atmospheres. Sealed lamps require better evacuation and even baking under vacuum to remove as much air as possible because once sealed, it's there forever.

[@ARCSTREAMS]

@@TechIngredients when you say evacuated you mean by vacume and creating negative pressure but not enough to break or collapse the glass? and when you introduce gas into it wont the negative pressure absorb enough gas to equalize back to a positive torr psi equivalent to the negative? or you are saying the amount of gas introduced can still be controlled? also i never understood how it is that in a vacuum discharge happens more easily than if there was air or a medium for the charge to break through ,are you not creating more resistance by removing the air inside?

[@TechIngredients]

The glass is strong enough not to collapse. They remove all the air, it is empty with nothing in it. A valve can be opened to a supply to low as much gas as desired back into the tube.

[@ARCSTREAMS]

@@TechIngredients got it ,but inside the tube is it easier for a discharge to happen when the tube has air in it as normal 1 atm or when there is a vacuum instead? i always assumed an electric field needs a medium to travel through so if there is no air then there should be too much resistance for electricity to flow,or is it the other way around? thank you

[@YodaWhat]

+Tech Ingredients -- Fascinating material about the tubes, power supply, gas and precautions, but I'm a bit surprised by the given solution to the gas feed danger (a danger which is explained better in another of your videos): 1. You do not pass gas into the high voltage end through a long tube with a grounded metal section and the flow restrictor at the far end, so that even if the gas pressure is low enough to allow breakdown in the quartz tube, the increased path length will inhibit breakdown in the gas feed tube, which has the additional safety of a grounded section which would arrest any discharge before it could reach the needle valve - - or - - 2. You do not simply vary the regulator output pressure at the high pressure tank, and leave the needle valve completely alone after one initial adjustment - - or - - 3. Fine-tune the tube pressure by adjustment on the (grounded) suction end, again after passing through a long section and/or a grounded metal tube.

[@TechIngredients]

This video covers the principles behind very high energy ablative wall lamps, but does not go into the needed detail regarding evacuation triggering or the isolation issues you raise. Take a look at the first video covering this dye laser and the video describing the power supply

[@normellow]

Is there any other acid that can be used besides nitric acid ?

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

what does it look like when ablation eventually damages the tube?

[@TechIngredients]

Some become cloudy, most look fine, even the occasional sputter from the electrodes is cleaned by the ablation. Finally, they just explode.

[@pixelpatter01]

The knot you make on the tube with the nichrome wire is called a half hitch.

[@mikemaster1773]

As you said that is a very elegant design. The tungsten/copper material is surprisingly expensive for a "poor man" build. I am curious if casting an ingot of your own tungsten power and copper would provide an economical alternative. Anyway, thank you for this video.

[@fluke196c]

This man has a great dry cleaner - wears the same shirt for years!

[@TomKappeln]

He has 100 of this ... like me :-)

[@imark7777777]

This is interesting subject I keep coming back to the idea of why in the world would a company produce a camera that made wavy video and think it was acceptable? I mean I don't get motion sickness but people do and boy is it noticeable. I Wonder what camera this was?

[@jek__]

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Unfortunate that this video came before your active sound cancellation one ;)

[@ARCSTREAMS]

so the silica/oxy is acting like a coating on the inner tube wall that absorbs the energy and emits its own bands just like the white powder coating in a cfl lamps i think its sodium or phosphor right? also if you look at this tube like it was a laser tube the heating of the inner gas moves the shape of the beam profile from a TEM00 to say a ring or donut profile(forgot the mode name) where the peak energy is no longer in the center but on the outer ring?

[@ARCSTREAMS]

also this film does it not act like a slow absorption and release medium? which makes the pulse duration appear somewhat longer?

[@magnitudematrix2653]

I wonder what the residue looks like under the microscope after high currents? You should try a Hydrogen Methane mix for Graphene, I was actually thinking about this kind of method earlier. Take a look at Dr. Paratts work on Plasma filament discharges in vacuums its fascinating. Thanks for confirming another idea.

[@ralphclarke4500]

Hey professor know our all, lol, when are you going to make a plasma rifle using ion implanter techniques? Great work as always

[@keinerkeiner3180]

Could someone buy this guy a microphone!!!???

[@TechIngredients]

They did! Check out our more recent videos.😀

[@Brooke95482]

The inductance of the wires between the cap and lamp may be important?

[@TechIngredients]

This can be important. When possible, keep these as short as you can and the larger the circumference, the better. This is usually done by using thin, flat metal strips as the cross section is not important, just the surface area, for lowering inductance.

[@YodaWhat]

+Tech Ingredients -- More surface area also helps with these very brief discharges because even though the capacitor is storing DC, the discharge has very high frequency components (like any square wave), and therefore the _skin effect_ of the conductors becomes important. Silver plating also helps, even if the base metal is a not-great conductor, like steel. Of course, the best conductivity occurs in vacuum arcing, because then the electrons have virtually nothing to impede their movement, and there are none of the pesky positive charges to slow things with their ion mass, because the ions are then so few and far between. Here's a thought... With a little modification of your electrodes and overall setup, you could have pressure arranged as: charged capacitor directly into electrode - high vacuum - split-pressure electrode - medium vacuum (gas discharge tube) - split-pressure electrode - high vacuum - electrode directly into capacitor ground. This also eliminates the need for special high-frequency, high-current wires, and may improve the discharge speed.

[@VeeDubR32]

Unfortunately, I had to turn the video off, the background noise was giving me a headache.

[@TomKappeln]

Same here ... to bad.

[@bengriffin4027]

CuW (Copper Tungsten) is not an amalgam. It is a metal matrix composite, and it is manufactured as you say. An amalgam contains mercury. An amalgam is actually a type of alloy, so there is no distinction to be made between amalgam and alloy other than amalgam being one small part of the larger set of alloys.

[@uploadJ]

FIRST def that comes up for amalgam - a·mal·gam əˈmalɡəm/ noun - a mixture or blend. "a curious amalgam of the traditional and the modern"

[@christopherleubner6633]

Yup used this stuff before as a high stability heat sinking mount for powerful laser diodes ❤

[@bengriffin4027]

@uploadJ well, yes. It isn't uncommon for a technical term, with a specific meaning when discussing something like metalurgy or material science, which has a far less specific meaning in common parlance. While the term amalgam might seem to fit using the definition you found, in the context of this discussion it is incorrect since amalgam is something specific when discussing metalurgy and this is not an amalgam.

[@Doctorbasss]

As always, This video was very interesting, Thanks for posting it ! Your next laser project will be using gas laser instead of the Diodes right?

[@javierlindenthal6680]

cant I do a cheap version with 2 or 4 Microwave transformers and maybe even the capacitors 1µF 2100V and rectifiers of 20 microwaves ? 5J*20 but maybe They die soon with the massive discarge! I know I cant use bridge rectifiers to keep ground at ground, so 2 sets of Transformers oposite phase with diodes...

[@TechIngredients]

Sure You can set up two identical transformers as a center tapped single transformer. You're more likely to see about 2 J out of your capacitors at 2kV. It might actually be less expensive to get a single surplus capacitor on eBay.

[@spudd86]

What's with weird low speed rolling shutter like effect?

[@TechIngredients]

Old camcorder with early generation image stabilization.

[@FredtheDorfDorfman1985]

I was wondering about that. I kept noticing the image at the lower left moving side to side, the wood panel on the left side of the shelves moving back and forth. I kept thinking, "am I having a stroke right now or something?"

[@FredtheDorfDorfman1985]

What's the name of this song? I can't think of who it's by or what it's called for the life of me.

[@stevemcqueen8584]

Float On - Modest Mouse

[@ramjet4025]

Excessive Noise. You need a headset mike with some noise cancelling. What is the purpose of this High Performance Flash Lamp?

[@TechIngredients]

Thanks! It's what drives the dye lasers in the subsequent videos.

[@TomKappeln]

This vaccum pump is killing me ! Sorry, like your videos NORMALY !

[@senorjp21]

This tying technique is the same technique used to tie a roast of beef

[@andymouse]

I think what your doing with the wire is a "butchers Knot" ya no?...like the Great British roast !

[@YodaWhat]

27:08 _These are not the droids you want._

[@ernestoterrazas3480]

As always very interesting but the background noise is terrible make the explanations hard to understand I couldn't finish watching all the program because I couldn't withstand that background noise.

[@LewisLoflin]

Background noise ruins video.

[@mikesunboxing]

walter white

[@SuperAWaC]

your cameraman is very skittish :)

[@1st_ProCactus]

The cameraman is useless, still is.

[@trollmcclure1884]

prone to panic attack around Dr. Electro. Probably has a gag inside a mouth and wires exiting his body at various places lool

[@jraschke]

Audio is horrible

[@Vaaaaadim]

Reality is being distorted throughout the video. I am not sure what to make of this. /s

[@robertmontgomery6887]

I note that a number comments on the sound quality of your videos VeeDubR32 tuned out and William Armstrong "Please buy a lapel mike" offers a good solution I also have a problem with the shaky hand held video footage and out of focus close ups. Many cameras have image stabilization and manual focus for an inexperienced operator or you can run with Auto Focus if the subject is kept to the center of frame. and watch the head room. You have much equipment for your demonstrations, maybe you could invest in some video equipment, even my phone can stabilize and focus auto and manual. Don't forget you are in the Business of Creating great Videos I don't want to miss out on good content because of poor Quality. I mean no offence to your camera operator and hope we can all learn from tuition and experience. The emperor has no clothes on. Ok I've been a little harsh your video but your content and presentations are so good they deserve a little production polish. Tks for the videos.

[@TechIngredients]

Thanks for the advice!😀

[@williamarmstrong7199]

Sorry sound so terrible I cannot watch this. Pity because I am very interested in the subject.

[@TechIngredients]

That is a pity.

[@TheExplosiveGuy]

Really? A little white noise in the background isn't a big deal, considering how awesome these videos are... snob.

[@Cyparagon]

I don't think 'amalgam' is the word you're looking for.

[@WunderlLast]

+Cyparagon I think you're right, amalgam has something to do with mercury from the little I know. Metal matrix composite might be a more correct term?

[@uploadJ]

Uh - uh, Go check an *actual* definition ...

[@Bob-yl9pm]

Turn-off that vacuum pump in the background, or get a good wireless microphone

[@TechIngredients]

We did and we have. Take a look at some of our more recent videos.

[@Bob-yl9pm]

@@TechIngredients Ok, Thank You!

[@williamarmstrong7199]

PLEASE BUY A LAPEL MIC!

[@TechIngredients]

Since that video, we did.

[@Bob-yl9pm]

BTW! you are so interesting! :)

[@dani777dani]

good video, bad very bad sound

[@educatedmanholecoverbyrich8890]

Please, get another cameraman.

[@maximumiq158]

it's weird that your audio in the videos is often so poor considering you know so much about audio.

[@TechIngredients]

Ya,I know. Video production is a pretty complicated skill set that we are aquiring as we go. We have zero background in this area, but we are working hard to improve. Thanks for your patience.

[@maximumiq158]

Anyway - I stayed watching through it all because content was so exciting 😁

[@bitsurfer0101]

too noisy to watch.

[@TechIngredients]

Fair enough. Our channel has grown considerably and we have learned a lot since that video was posted. Hopefully, you will watch some of our newer videos and enjoy them.

[@normellow]

@@TechIngredients I like the noise, lab atmospheric realism.

[@laurenceharris8160]

Bad sound

[@outgoingcare]

please shut off noise during videos, way too had on the ears