Is there a right and wrong way to mount the laser tube? Of course I know which way the business end points but I was wondering about the way the tube is clocked in its holders. Does the High Voltage lead always point up?
Also, is it important to plumb the water from back (high voltage end) to front (business end)? This is the way my laser was from the factory.
Technically the axial rotation orientation doesn’t matter. Practically, however, you would want the water outlet from the tube pointed up to minimize trapped air bubbles. The way the tubes are made usually means that the electrodes are pointed up when the water outlet is pointed up.
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Just make sure that the anode is as far away from the frame/cabinet as possible. Some have suggested that pointing the water ports up will cause arcing. Although that is a possibility my bet has been that those folks had a dead tube. Dead tubes unload the supply and that will cause a LPS to find a load [the cabinet] close by. So with the ports up it may more easily arch when the tube is dead…
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I had an issue where the tube was arcing to the chassis from the anode when i rotated the tube to have the water outlet on top. i simply affixed some acrylic to the metal where it was arcing to act as an insulator and problem solved! To be fair my tube BARELY fit and only has maybe an inch from end to mirror one and it was my original tube, which has been swapped out already. i just left the insulator instead of testing if it was still an issue as better safe than sorry.