Less bewilderment.

The laser assembly I took out ? How long did you think it was going to sit there before I took it apart ? OK, now this is a bit unusual, but a friend of mine took it apart before I did. he was there and said "got a phillips ?". I should have known better but you know, I don't care.

Regardless, I finally took it apart myself. I looked at it intensely, there is a motor with a four sided mirror. There are all these other mirrors and lenses. Once you see it you get the idea how it works. In fact if anyone is interestec maybe I'll take it apart again and get some pictures, but for now....

I am pretty sure I fixed it. I looked at that four sided rotary mirror and it did not look shiny. Quite dull in fact. Remember I said it was not in the best of environments ? We are talking four heavy smokers in a small house.. That small house also means that between laundry and cooking it was also quite humid.

The gunk on the mirror was not hard to get off with a Qtip.

There was never an issue with tomer at all, or high voltage or anything else, it was simply that the LASER beam could not get out of the box. Now if the replacemetn fails I have one.