IR Focusable Laser project, ILLEGAL, lol srsly

Long story short, I am getting into rifles shooting etc fun stuff, next summer will go hunting and from there on I think I will take it up as it all really interests me. I am soon ordering PVS-14 ITT Pinnacle Gen 3+ Autogated, and while it does work with even starlight, if I am in the dark woods and overcast weather, I wont see much.

I want to have a laser sight on my rifle so that I don't have to use a scope, but I PRIMARILY want an IR flashlight, now I also don't want to buy two separate items, while buying an IR flashlight is relatively inexpensive, IR lasers for rifles etc are pure rip off, plus higher grades IR lasers are military only and cant be even sold to civilians.

The further in wavelength you go, as I understood, the less RED glow you will see from the source of light, and you wont give out your location that way, so I noticed on professional websites selling military spec IR they only had one 808nm, everything else was 830-860nm.

REGARDLESS, it was 808nm to 860nm, I did not see ~900's.
Main difference between civilian and military was the power, on civilian ones costing as high as $900 the wavelength was BELOW 1mW!

Military ranged from 50mW to 3W

Now, what I want to do is make an IR laser that can use a focusing lens to make a light flooding effect or a flashlight effect, or just a lens that will diffuse the beam well enough to give the flashlight effect.

On the picture you see the focused IR beam of a 3W unit

it has narrow/wide written on the neck for the focusing of the beam


I want to use the unit primarily as a high power super long range flashlight, and secondary, obviously, a laser, and the challenge to compile such thing. So I suppose because the beam will be diffused I need a high power laser that can perhaps have two or three modes High/mid/low, or just High/low for flashlight/laser operation.

wicked lasers has many lenses, would they work, flood/flashlight for example?


Where can I get the cheapest possible diode for 808-860nm lasers with power going from 50mW to 1-3W?
Is heat going to be an issue for those lasers?
What can I used to diffuse the beam to make it look like flashlight?
What price range for the unit am I looking at?

Now sit down before you fall down laughing consequently hit your head on the wall and cry.This is a civilian IR laser 0.5mW low power - 0.8mW high power, plus an IR flashlight
price $900

Something like this might work for you: LZIR - 808nm 200mW Focusable Infrared Laser Pointer

If you could mount it to your gun then all you would have to do is twist the focus ring until the laser is unfocused and it would give you a flashlight-like effect. Then if you wanted a beam effect you could twist the focus ring until the laser formed a beam again.

thanks man, I gotta confirm somehow about the lenses ability to make a flashlight affect though

Just put a piece of frosted plastic in front of the laser, done. If you need it more focused, then basically any lens will work, just stick a magnifying glass in front.

yeah but i want it done nicely without using duct tape, I want everything to fit in case ill need an extra lens..

I habe an idea, PVS-14 viewing angle is 40* so I need a beam just as wide if not wider, what do you think if I use a concave or biconcave lens as attachment it would help spread out the beam more?

led based ir illuminators are relatively inexpensive.

streamlight super tac
tnvc's da torch and torch pro
surefire vampire lights
and eagletac's super highbpowered osram based offerings
check some of them out and look at their power output. usually only a couple hundred mw max.

an ir laser can be an illuminator, or a pointer, but when you start adding adjustable focus to do both, you lose the ability to retain zero. its been done before and didn't work well.

the military aimers are also used to mark locations for aircraft that are at altitude. they need to be extremely bright. But for civilians and hunters, they woukd make a bright bloom that would abscure the entire target, and risk damage to a very expensive optic. the mil doesn't worry about optic damage.

for pistol range, 0.1mw to 0.3mw is sufficient. go brighter and the bloom is larger than your pistol is accurate. for rifle, sub 1mw is effective further than you can safely shoot 9 times out of 10.

the military units have high and low modes, and are built to not fail, for a customer that pays top dollar. the civilian units are expensive, because they are military units modded to be class 1 and fda exempt.

I usually dont recommend ir laser based flashlights, because the first thing somene does when it doesnt illuminate to the naked eye, is look directly in it. also most laser modules are not built to withstand recoil, and the recoil can change the focus. i've also had issues with modules overheating being used for long periods as flashlights.

that picture of a focued 3w, looks to be completely obscuring several hundred sqft of forest from an aircraft. way to powerful to be used.

from info posted here, visable red glow between 8 and 900nm is a little more related to power level than exact wavelength.

I don't care much into illuminating someones eye, that should not happen, and if it does it will only warm up their face, IR flashlight is not as bad as ultraviolet flashlight that damages your DNA and gives you cancer, or burns your retina, everything gives off IR, molten lava, steal, its all IR, all it does is warms you up.

anyway, of course i wont be getting a 3W IR laser, but Blark King suggested this
LZIR - 808nm 200mW Focusable Infrared Laser Pointer
iwent on that website and they actually have a more safe 500mW model that works with a key, what SUCKS is as what you mentioned, I cannot control power, its 500mW until the battery dies or whatever, thats too much for a laser, perfect for a nice wide beam flashlight though, but as for laser its powerful, still beats any mil spec crap, such rip off

my main reason is long range wide beam flashlight for forest, and have ability to focus it better for a long range if i hook up some zooming lenses on the pvs14, plus there is also this other digital night vision = sony handycam or whatever, that would be pretty useful for that too, even though it hardly interests me at this point

as per glow you are right but still, we are talking about same power, nowhere can I find which wavelengths are better recognized by nods, obviously the lower the better, but what are the limitations? someone also i think said that 900nm's emit purple glow, darker than IR red glow

peak sensitivity for IR varys from one nv generation to another.

look at the specs for commercial/military lasers and illuminators designed to be used with gen 3 and you'll quickly see the common wavelengths used. TNVC's website has all the wavelengths and power outputs listed, it should give you a really good idea.
But basically under 800 and its too visable to the naked eyes, and over 900 and you are losing too much sensitivity.

I can only "see" about 100-200 yards in the forest, even in daylight, because trees and brush prevent me from seeing any further.

some of the really good led illuminators do 600 yards on only a couple hundred milliwatts, and their leds and reflectors are less efficient than laser diodes.

I think a 200 mw 808nm isn't going to be any better than a regular flashlight with a red filter on it. either for nv or your naked eye.


I'm pretty sure any purple glow from 900nm is only what digital cameras are seeing. digital records IR as purple.

Krane said:

I don't care much into illuminating someones eye, that should not happen, and if it does it will only warm up their face,

Click to expand...

Ummm, if you should ever happen to point a 3W, or even a 200mW IR laser into someone's eye it won't just "warm up their face", it will cause serious permanent eye damage or even blindness. 800-900nM light, while not really 'visible' will still be focused by the lens in the eye and cause exactly the same retina damage as a visible laser of the same power. The potential is there for the infrared laser to do even more damage because the person or critter on the recieving end of the beam won't be motivated to blink or turn away from the brilliant light the way they would be if a visible wavelength laser were pointed at them.

here's a link to a thread w/ video I made to show what 5mw and 20mw of green looks like in night vision. I also filter out all the visable green with an ir pass filter, and show the remaining ir that "bleeds through" the green.

as you can see, both lasers, while low power, are too bright. if you go to the youtube link and watch part 2 you can see that I'm starting to get image burn in at the end of part 2. that's really bad.
http://laserpointerforums.com/f45/l...aninated-ir-green-dpss-86329.html#post1253657