Is it necssary at some point to warm up a glass CO2 laser tube?
The recent extreme arctic blasts in the US have meant the unheated area of my basement where my laser resides has reached new low temperatures. Is there a temperature point at which we need to worry about thermal shocking a glass CO2 tube? I have set my chiller to maintain around 18 degrees C year round, but there have been times over the last couple weeks where my water temp has been right around 12 degrees when I went to start up the laser.
Like most smaller chillers, my CW5000 chiller does not incorporate a heater in it. Hopefully it isn't an issue at these temps, but IF thermal shock at the temperature range discussed above is actually an issue worth worrying about, I was thinking maybe relatively gentle heating of the tube could be accomplished by writing a design/program file that fires the laser at the minimum percentage required to fully light the tube for a certain amount of time. For example, 11% power at 1 mm per second speed for maybe 5 minutes? Or maybe stair-stepping it at 11% for two minutes, then 13%, then 15% for two minutes or whatever?
Insights would be appreciated. Thanks.