A Few Questions to get a Newbie Started

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum and laser in general. I was drawn in by a site offering DIY kits for handheld units from 500mW to 2200mW about a week ago and have been researching CW laser diodes ever since. I'm starting to get a pretty good basic idea of the physics involved with the help of this forum, but I have a question:

One of the "custom" builds available on this site is a 445 nm 5,000mW unit for a small fortune: Survival Laser 5 445nm Parts Bundle. After reading some posts on this site though, I was under the impression that the M-140 diode was "king of the hill" right now in terms of high output CW diodes which max at about 2,200mW @ 1.8A. Is this not the case - are they using another diode? Or have they just dialed up the amperage to way beyond what the M-140 is spec'd for? I’ve decided against a cookie-cutter kit like this one, but I’m curious as to how they got that kind of output.

I'm also trying to verify a basic formula that will estimate the output of a laser (not counting diode efficiency, lens-gain(?), resistance in the unit etc.) I know Power(W)=Voltage x Current and if I recall correctly Frequency = 1 / Wavelength.

I have been using the following formula, mainly because it appears to be correct, but I don't have the physic knowledge to know for sure:

PLaser= (V x I)/(1/λ)

Is this close? Or does someone know a better formula that works better for CW diode laser output?

Thanks for your help and hopefully I will be able to post pics of my first build soon!

The 9mm 445 diodes can hit the 3W mark and higher but not that high. With that price tag this could be the newer 9mm diodes which are capable of that output. We haven't seen much activity on the forum withthem because llet's face it, not many people have 700$ to drop on some magic the size of a pea

Price on the new diodes is down to 480. So, bear that in mind when pricing things. A lot of prices are based on initial street costs.