We have studied the characteristics of a cw Ti:sapphire laser pumped by an Ar-ion laser. Ti:sapphire is one of the most attractive materials for the generation of ultra-short pulses because of its very broad gain bandwidth. We used a 4.1 mm thick, 0.15 wt. % $Ti^{3+}$ -doped, Brewster-angled Ti:sapphire crystal and made a folded cavity to create a strong focusing mode. The folding angle of the cavity was adjusted to $15.4^{circ}$ to compensate for the astigmatism from the Brewster-angled Ti:sapphire crystal. 5 WAr-ion laser was used as a pumping source. We observed that the Ti:sapphire cw output power was sensitively changed with respect to the condition of the folded cavity. The threshold pumping power was 2 Wand the slope efficiency was 16% when an output coupler of 10% transmission was used. The maximum output power was more than 450 mW at 5 W pumping. mping.