How does a laser work?

Civil Building & Construction

For the competitive construction market, MCE Lasers has a proven range of products that are efficient, reliable and will meet your budget requirements. This range includes laser levels, grade laser, pipelasers, receiving systems, GPS, as well as line and dot lasers.

Safety & Monitoring

Lasers applied in safety and monitoring systems are growing in popularity. MCE Lasers’ off-the-shelf high precision instruments can meet a wide range of safety and monitoring requirements, including angle and slope monitoring, intrusion detection and remote triggering.

Mining & Tunnelling

MCE Lasers has developed an innovative laser range for the mining and tunnelling industry. We manufacture intrinsically safe (explosion proof) and tunnelling lasers with a superior range of up to 2 km. Single and dual beam lasers with tailored receiver technology will provide your underground alignment solutions.

Industrial Alignment

High precision alignment can improve efficiency and reduce costs. The MCE Lasers industrial alignment product range includes precision alignment, slope sensors and underground drilling lasers. We can also develop a tailored solution to meet your precision alignment needs, no matter what your industry.

Agriculture & Land Levelling

Alignment and levelling lasers are used widely on farms to improve productivity. MCE Lasers has been developing lasers for on-farm use for over twenty years. Today we offer an unrivalled range of land levelling solutions that will increase the competitiveness of your farming businesses in domestic and global markets.

Medical & Therapeutic

MCE Lasers has extended its product range to include medical and therapeutic lasers for veterinary applications. Lasers may provide deep tissue stimulation for large animals such as horses and greyhounds, which can contribute to speeding up recovery time and healing after injury.

How does a laser work?

Click here to download the below information as a PDF file (360 kB).

Light
Amplifications by
Stimulated
Emission of
Radiation

Between 1910 and 1920, scientists including Albert Einstein theorised that atoms could be made to give out radiation under certain conditions. The technology to test this theory, however, only became available in the 1950’s. By 1965, Theodore Maiman had put the theory to practical application by using a ruby rod surrounded by a flash tube and helium-neon gas, to generate radiation which came to be known as laser beam.

The name LASER is an acronym which describes the way a laser works – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

A laser is a device, which excites atoms, the smallest particles of the Universe, so that they give out energy as light in a unique way. Follow the diagram to the right for an illustration of how this occurs, using Theodore Maiman’s rod made of ruby crystals as an example. This rod is set inside a cylinder with a mirror at either end. One mirror is fully reflective, but the other is only partially silvered and so a very strong light will be able to pass through it. A flash tube is coiled around the cylinder. When this fires a flash of light the ruby atoms become excited and produce tiny bursts of light called photons. These photons strike the atoms, exciting them to produce more and more photons until the tube is filled with them bouncing back and forth from mirror to mirror. Soon the amount of photons is so great that they pass right through the partially reflective mirror. This is the laser beam itself. Laser beams can be generated by several other means, though the most common in construction lasers are laser diodes. MCE Lasers uses both red and green beam laser diodes in their products. While red beam lasers are the most common and less expensive, green beam lasers provide superior visibility.

When the laser was invented, it was thought to be merely an interesting scientific oddity with no practical use. Since then, important uses have been found for lasers, and their usefulness in many aspects of modern life continues to grow. These include industrial cutting and welding, medical treatment, communications, pollution monitoring and nuclear fusion research. Lasers also provide the most superior alignment and leveling solutions in modern industry applications.

	MCE Lasers exhibiting at Bauma Munich, Germany 2010 At Bauma 2010, MCE Lasers will be displaying their complete range of laser levels, machine control, pipe-laying lasers, tunnel lasers and measuring instruments. The MCE product ...Read More
	Dual Control Panel Going From Strength To Strength MCE LASER, Australia’s only laser manufacture is once again going strength to strength with the release of their latest CB.DUO2 Dual receiving system. The new system utilizes ...Read More
	New rotating laser a winner on construction sites MCE lasers has unveiled its latest rotating laser to the construction industry, the LAS.203 rotating laser is compact, robust and packed full of features. This new laser level ...Read More
	Introducing two must have building tools For all builders, plasterers and handymen who want inexpensive, quick and precise products to keep their work on line and on time, we recommend the LAS.5VH and the ...Read More