High pressure water jet (Lasers)

Hello list,

I was perusing through a Cole Parmer catalog and ended up under Hazard
clean up equipment or something and there were a few pressure washers for
sweeping up split stuff. If I remember correctly, one of these washers ran
at 2,400 psi. Not quite 60,000 but possibly enough to begin that
investigation? : ) I'm very unsure about this but I think I also saw
one at 4,000. They wouldn't exactly blow holes in the metal but would that
be anywhere near enough pressure to machine metal away real slowly? It's got
to be faster than EDM if it's loaded with media. I'm not sure of the details
because I can't find the catalog at the moment. On top of that the catalog
is MASSIVE, painful to hold with one hand, so it'd take ages to flick
through. If anyone would like to know about it a bit more though I could
have a read.

I remember hearing someone mention building a laser on here at some
point. I have to make you itch now. I went on some trip with our school's
top year in Physics to a laser lecture last week. Everyone seemed pretty
bored but this guy had a good few different lasers up there, including a
full argon ion with an x-y mirror system. He said he collected them at home,
because he also investigated lasers and photography inside human cells, and
that he had more than 50. Sitting on the table at the front was not only a
ruby rod the size of a heavy pencil but an ND:YAG rod about 1" thick by 7 or
8 long! It was worth something rediculous over £10,000 but someone had
dropped it in his lab and there was now a crack across the end. If my less
laser orintated friends hadn't forced me back onto the train (Which they
did) I would have been up there just to pick the monster up. Maybe Spec
Saver could have polished it up for me. : ) I'm very interested in lasers
and I may even look at doing it at university if the laser builder of this
group wants to talk about CO^2 with anyone. I'd make my own but I don't have
enough cash to make it worth while right now. : ( I'm not sure I could
trust myself around one either, I'd proberly just have to try beefing it up
with some LN^2 cooling. [Mu-ha-ha-har] I read diode lasers increase in
efficiency by 90%+ if they're super cooled. Imagine making your CO^2 laser
90% efficient. You could be running a KILO watt tube instead of 100w. The
fact that it's not done in industrial sized tubes is making me think though
that perhaps there is a reason for LN^2 not being used. ?Thermal lensing?
?Cost? ?It doesn't actually work with gas tubes?

Always trying to find a new, annoying and time consuming outlook on things,
John