It Slices, It Dices…

Written by Tom Nugent on Thursday, June 4th, 2009

…It Cooks!

There are always more tests one can do when developing a new system, especially one like ours that is so different from what’s been done before. During one recent test, we ran our lasers at high power to evaluate some of our optics, and as usual we dumped the beam into our foamed carbon beam stops. But why let all that energy go to waste, especially when it’s easy to skip meals while working late? So we decided to grill some hot dogs while running the test. Here’s the result:

Yum! And here is a video of the cooking process. Next time we’ll have to throw an IR filter on the camcorder to reduce the brightness of the laser light.

We still have some spare hot dogs in the fridge, so if we need to do another test like this, we’ll probably cook some more. This time, we just need to remember to bring some condiments…