I have just recently finished one of the new laser heads for my CO2 laser. I believe this design will work much better that the last. I used a 2″ piece of aluminum and designed it so it will grab the outside of an acrylic tube and the outside of the laser bore. I decided to again go with using the laser head as the electrodes, as that part seemed to work fairly well on the last design. I decided to also space the mirrors apart from these electrodes using some hard plastic material. The step on the end was to try to keep the mirror insulator centered so I can remove the mirrors without adjusting alignment, I’m not too sure how well this will work. When aligning the mirrors on the old tube I found the slightest adjustment caused a drastic change over the long 1.2m tube.
The hole in the top of the 2nd picture is where epoxy will be inserted to insulate these head tubes from the cooling water. I have bought a epoxy which is supposed to bond glass, metals and acrylic. I have tried gluing scrap material together and the outcome is promising. I drilled the fill hold with a #29 drill so after the epoxy has dried I can re-drill and tap the hold with a 8-32 screw for the electrical connection.
And a pic with showing how it will go together, using a piece of laser bore I accidentally broke.
I also spent some time with this one on the buffing wheel. Just for better looks
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