Exfo Wavemeter

Files

• User manual

Notes

• It seems like a couple times a year the wavemeter needs to be realigned or have the reference laser recalibrated. The description of each error is in the manual above. There are also notes from various people who have realigned/recalibrated it through the years in the filing cabinet in the lab.

• In December 2015 error 10 kept occurring. The description of error 10 in the manual says "The laser stabilization circuit is indicating an over temperature condition. Turn off the WA- 1500/1000, wait 15 minutes and power up again. It the problem persists, contact EXFO Service." We kept getting error 10 (and many other errors) even after letting it cool down. It got to the point where after you would turn it on, you couldn't have it on for more than a few minutes without it having a constant error message of some sort on the display. There was also some sort of very fast clicking noise that happened when all the errors started happening. I emailed Exfo and they said it is probably that the reference laser needs replacing. However, they also said that they don't make wavemeters any more and don't have any spare parts for it. David and I took the bottom half of the outer case off and found the reference laser (a Melles Griot frequency stabilized HeNe), looked it up and found a replacement HeNe would be several thousand dollars. We decided to try to connect the HeNe to an external power supply in case it was just the power supply that was failing. That turned out to the be case and now it works like a charm. Now you need to first turn on the Uniphase power supply that is attached to the back of the wavemeter and wait a minute or so for the HeNe to turn on. Then turn the wavemeter on and it should work like normal. If the power supply isn't on first or laser doesn't have time to turn on before all the "LA OP xx" procedures run, you will get an error.