Elad Orbach : eBay find lam research spectrometer and light source reveng

I found this interesting looking item on eBay. It was advertised as a LAM Research and Excelitas PAX 10 precision aligned pulsed xenon light source.

What I saw was a xenon light source connected to a small spectrometer, so I had to find out what it was even though it was a little expensive.

The light source is an Excelitas PAX 10 with a 10 W xenon lamp. Searching the numbers on the other unit led me to several HORIBA and Jobin Yvon spectrometers that looked similar. I think it belongs to the VS7000 family, possibly the VS7000 CCD, but the exact grating, slit and wavelength configuration are still unknown.

The power appears to be shared between the light source and spectrometer. A DB9 cable enters the xenon source and continues to the spectrometer, while the USB connection belongs to the spectrometer.

PAX 10 pinout

Pin 1: Vin

Pin 2: Vin

Pin 4: Trigger minus

Pin 5: Trigger plus

Pin 6: Ground

Pin 7: Ground

Spectrometer pinout

Pin 3: Main unit DB9 pin 3

Pin 5: Trigger plus

Pin 9: Trigger minus

This looks like it allows the main DB9 connector to trigger both the spectrometer and the xenon source.

The fiber probe is also interesting. The outer ring of fibers carries the xenon light to the sample, while the center fiber returns the reflected light to the spectrometer.

The PAX 10 label gives an input range of 11 to 28 V. After checking the polarity, I started at 11 V on a current limited supply and slowly increased it while watching the USB connection. A green status LED appeared at about 23 V, so I used 24 V, which is the more likely nominal supply.

The spectrometer appeared over USB as:

Vendor ID: 0x0c9b, Jobin Yvon, Inc.

Product ID: 0x000e

The trigger input was specified as 5 V. I tested it first at 1 Hz and then at 100 Hz, and the xenon source flashed correctly.

Everything seems to be working, so it was not a complete waste of money :-)

I still need to find the spectrometer driver. I did not receive an answer from HORIBA or LAM Research. I will also replace the power connector with something more common.

PAX 10 information:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160910012708/http://www.excelitas.com/downloads/dts_pax10.pdf

HORIBA VS7000 information:

http://www.horiba.com/fileadmin/uploads/Scientific/Documents/OEM/VS7000-parts_list.pdf

Photos below.