The YAG MAX series are what you might call bare bones lamp-pumped solid state lasers. They are about as basic as possible short of perhaps using the Sun as the pump source. :) In the case of the C-80, a single 500 W halogen lamp is the pump source for an Nd:YAG rod with mirrors on adjustable mounts attached to the ends of the case. Water cooling keeps the entire thing from melting down. A removable aperture that slides onto the end of the rod can be installed to force TEM00 (single spatial mode, SM) operation. Otherwise, it runs multi-spatial mode (MM) but with much higher power. The only "electronics" consists of a couple of fuses, a water flow switch, time delay relay, power relay for the lamp, and interlock plug.
On this laser, I've only done mirror alignment to get it lasing. The output power is approximately a whopping 40 mW SM and 140 mW MM. Even condidering the inefficiency of halogen lamp pumping, this is low. I assume it should be 5 to 10 times these values, but I have not attempted to clean anything, nor done a proper mirror walk to peak power (though I doubt the latter would have a significant effect).
Even with the water cooling, the top of the laser gets toasty warm fairly quickly. There is at least one other similar model - the C-95 - with two lamps and thus higher power - and it probably works even better as a space heater. ;-)
