Looking to purchase blue pointer...

You should look into member ricktrent's lasers. (not an endorsement) He has a selection of outputs and they come in hosts more similar to a WL. He pushes some of those to well over 3W. I can't imagine how short lived one of those diodes would be!

Just don't expect him to be able to talk to you about technical details and such. He couldn't even tell me the details on his drivers.

Better yet, go to the 445nm forum here, and look at all the various high-powered lasers people are showing off there.

Builders like Blord and myself can offer you a variety of hosts. If you want something that you can do some assembly on, JayRob is a great member here, and has many builds for sale in various complexities.

scumbagatheist said:

Firelaser, what kind of specs are you referring to? Outputs vary from one diode to the next, even in single batches. The M-140 is capable of over 2W, the 9mm is capable of 3W+ and more.

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ok and i basically meant how many mw is each one said to be limited to for best results, i.e rated for 1.5W But can safely hit up to 2W without over-stressing the diode ...

Oh, 2W on my M-140 is pretty stressful. But, that laser is my daily-driver at work, and I don't expect a long life out of it. But, I've protected myself with a >400 gram copper heatsink, >12 grams of copper on the driver, and I try to keep the duty cycles to 5 minutes or less. It's a super performer, but I still anticipate an early death. Which is fine, as it's a working laser. It's already earned enough for another diode when the time comes.

The are datasheets on these diodes available. The basic formula around here is to double the diodes rated current settings as a start. Some push harder, some a little less. My theory for lifespans is to halve the DS rating, and then another 10-15% because hard pushing. I don't have enough data to know that's accurate. It's just my expectations, depending on the diode's inherent efficiency.

scumbagatheist said:

Oh, 2W on my M-140 is pretty stressful. But, that laser is my daily-driver at work, and I don't expect a long life out of it. But, I've protected myself with a >400 gram copper heatsink, >12 grams of copper on the driver, and I try to keep the duty cycles to 5 minutes or less. It's a super performer, but I still anticipate an early death. Which is fine, as it's a working laser. It's already earned enough for another diode when the time comes.

The are datasheets on these diodes available. The basic formula around here is to double the diodes rated current settings as a start. Some push harder, some a little less. My theory for lifespans is to halve the DS rating, and then another 10-15% because hard pushing. I don't have enough data to know that's accurate. It's just my expectations, depending on the diode's inherent efficiency.

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ok still 2000 hours, less than half the 5000 normal rating is a whole 5 hours a day for a year! , so an hour a day for 5 years, its still prob less than that but my m140 1.6w should hold up a few years with the use its has, sometimes none to sometimes up to an hour a day, so i should get a few good years out of it, if i dont damage it in some other way

Again, that is if my "calculations" are in any way accurate in the least. I have no real basis in fact of accuracy.

I try to keep track of battery charges as a unit of measurement for diode life, as it's a bit easier to track than hours of use. Surprisingly, as I use this at work, it still has around 5 battery discharges on the diode. All in all, I'm quite happy with this output in a single 18650 package!

scumbagatheist said:

Again, that is if my "calculations" are in any way accurate in the least. I have no real basis in fact of accuracy.

I try to keep track of battery charges as a unit of measurement for diode life, as it's a bit easier to track than hours of use. Surprisingly, as I use this at work, it still has around 5 battery discharges on the diode. All in all, I'm quite happy with this output in a single 18650 package!

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Lol well I've gone through quite a few charges of 2 16340 s but those were ultra fires . Just got some real ones. IMR 18340s and the charge is way better

Yeah, I learned my lesson, long ago, with UltraFires. This particular laser has always run on a Panasonic 3400mAh 18650.

scumbagatheist said:

You should look into member ricktrent's lasers. (not an endorsement) He has a selection of outputs and they come in hosts more similar to a WL. He pushes some of those to well over 3W. I can't imagine how short lived one of those diodes would be!

Just don't expect him to be able to talk to you about technical details and such. He couldn't even tell me the details on his drivers.

Better yet, go to the 445nm forum here, and look at all the various high-powered lasers people are showing off there.

Builders like Blord and myself can offer you a variety of hosts. If you want something that you can do some assembly on, JayRob is a great member here, and has many builds for sale in various complexities.

Click to expand...

Well, sorry for the lack of responses over the past few days. My wife delivered our twin girls on saturday, so I was a bit tied up and away from the internet for a couple days.

Back to the subject at hand here...

I've been thinking about the build configuration I'd like, and while I'd love to have a burner, it seems like there's a sacrifice for the beam divergence and "showoff" aesthetic factor. I love me a tight beam. Are single-mode diodes able to get to burning power at all? I'd love to have the ability to burn sometimes, but my burn knowledge is limited to the 150mW green WL that I already have.

As for hosts: I've been looking on a few websites, and there are a few hosts out there that have WL Spyder3-type hosts, like I prefer (Lazerer Rifle). I'm not a fan of the hosts that have a "fat head" look. Can you recommend types of hosts (if any) that may fit into that category? I'm sorry to ask so much from you, but if I'm planning on spending some serious cash on this thing, I'd like to get as close to what I like as possible. Do you or anyone ever use WL hosts for custom builds? Are they hard to come by?

Again, thanks so much, gents. I appreciate the help and time you are giving to get me spun up on the matter. I wish I could hold and try out a bunch of lasers to figure this stuff out, as I am a very hand-on person, but asking around (and Google) is the best thing I have at the moment.

you could burn if a 120-160mw single mode blue if it is focused, pop balloons and matches ect.. but not like a 1+w blue ..

multimode blue lasers are not that bad for divergence, they are not as good as green obviously but when i point my 1600mw blue it still looks like a thin beam going on forever..1600mw 445nm blue laser beam at night - YouTube
it looks ok but side by side with green it is very noticeable for the difference

Divergence of 4 lasers from 350 feet.wmv - YouTube

single mode would look more like the red or green

but i have heard you could use expensive optics to fix the divergence on blue, not sure, can anyone conform this?

Are there any hosts that are waterproof and can handle 1.5W+ output?

O-Like sells some waterproof 1W lasers, but 1.5W I haven't seen.

I'm new to the whole custom laser pointer creation thing, but I recently brought the 1.5W rifle laser from lazerer. It definitely burns, light matches, burn though black xbox game cases etc. The beam was also visible at night. when my cousin saw it he went out and brought the 1W Artic laser from WL. I laughed at him for it, but it gave me a chance to compare the two when he brought it over. The Artic was far weaker than the 1.5W rifle after observations of their burning speeds through the same material. I cannot give you the power however. The Artic's host is very cool, but the SmartSwitch and different modes of operation made it a pain in the ass to operate. If you don't want to build your own, I would highly recommend the 1.5W rifle from lazerer. The only drawback is the lack of a safety key.

rifles are ok, I think the guts could be put together with more care. I love the effects caps. the glasses included suck, you should get better ones, after I did, I noticed a huge difference. the charger and batteries suck too. I nearly got a WL arctic, got a spartan instead. wish I'd have gone with the rifle first, though I can't say I recommend Lazerer in general

yeah screw smart switches