IR laser question

OK i have read/heard about burning w/ high power red lasers and burning w/ green lasers is pretty much common knowledge. does anyone here know if burning can happen w/ infra-red (invisible) lasers? i have no idea why i need to know stuff like this, but when my curiosity is piqued i just gotta find out. so if ya know the answer then also please share how much power IR lasers would need for burning. i once took apart an old laser printer thinking i might put together a nearly free pointer. at first i was bummed... i found the laser part of things, but cuold not get it to power up. i evidently left things hooked up, because later that night while fooling w/ my night vision scope i thought i saw light coming from the pile that used to be a laser printer. long story short- i had sucessfully powered it up... but it was IR. with nite vision i could see it project an IR dot for miles! unfortunatly further expirementation caused it's early demise... when i hooked it to a 9 volt battery i cooked it. still very interesting and something i will explore further(like the next time somebody pitches a broke laser printer)!

Yes, but the burning depends on the type. In industry, high power CO2 10600nm lasers in anywhere from a few watts, to thousands of watts are used for burning. I've also sold a few 400mW 808nm IR pointers which were amazing for burning, but were practically useless against red. Against black though they even beat out my best greenies.

thank you, that's interesting. i'm not sure exactly how, but i bet it wouldn't take me long to figure out how to have a bunch of fun w/ something like that. pointer size u say? something else for the list... but this may bump some of the other things on the list!!

Well, you cannot regularly get these from any source I know of and I don't have any anymore, but they were pretty interesting. They were pointers of the same general form as Dragon Lasers and just slightly longer. If you think you'd be interested in one you can e-mail me at pseudonomen137@gmail.com, but I would not be able to get my hands on any for at least a few more weeks, and I would only sell to someone I could trust with it.

Laserglow offers the Hades 1064nm IR laser at >500mW. We can also do custom high powered IR at 808nm and 980nm in an Aries-style housing up to about 700mW. And yes, as long as the target material absorbs the particular wavelength it will burn things quite well. The only problem is the inherent danger in having a 700mW invisible laser, because as you already noticed it can be tough to tell when it is on and where it is pointing. Goggles are highly recommended if you enjoy the sense of sight.

I think I can safely say that anyone READING these posts, likes their sense of sight ! ;D

Yep, laserglow should be able to get those in 808nm 700mW forms, which are actually very very slightly visible. Problem is, unlike the Hades, which is a nice DPSS laser with matching beam specs, the 808nm and 980nm ones in the 500-700mW range are just collimated diode laser, and the beam specs are atrocious. They make the most out of spec greenie I've ever had seem like a miracle breakthrough in collimation.

1064nm at low power is not very exciting i guess....