Overall best "burning" pointer

well, yes. but around 450nm, in the green spectrum is what our eyes perceive as most visible, while any color with a higher or lower nm is less visible to us.

Hm, why dont they start making green lasers at 450nm then, i guess it would just cost a bunch.

...lazer.... ;D ;D ;D

couple things, 450nm is a blu-ish color and our eyes are most sensitive to 555nm light.

the following attachment should help.

Hey, i was right then, i thought 450 wasnt the highest senstivity to our eyes..., so 532 is close to the highest senstivity.

...lazer... ;D ;D ;D

It depends on what you want, really.

InfraRed lasers (IR) will give you the MOST bang for your buck. You can easily get a 400mW for less than 350 bucks. That should burn quite well. There are a few problems with that though.

InFrared isnt red-its invisible to humans. We cant see the wavelength of that light, thus, it makes it kind of pointless unless you ONLY want to burn things. The second problem goes beyond your luxury index-you can pretty much kill your eyes over time. Since you cant SEE IR light, you dont blink when it hits your eyes. But the wavelength is still going into your eye-so you have a horrible effect. Imagine staring at the sun without blinking or squinting for a while over time-it'll hurt your eyes.


The second thing you can do is make you own laser. A guy named "KipKay" put a hit video on a while ago with his "New burning laser pointer" To make it concise- You take apart a DVD BURNER and extract its diode. Senkat sells them already taken out and in its housing. You connect it to a circuit and then pretty much just adjust the power and fiddle with the lens of the Axixz housing until its focused. Its pretty cheap-you can do the entire thing for LESS than 50 bucks provided you know what you are doing. These things get a good 120-200 mW's of red light (650 nm)

You could always buy your own greenie, though. Just expect to pay A LOT more for smaller mW models. For instance-the cheapest you will get a 55 greenie with shipping and a decent IR filter is no less than 130 bucks. The most a 55 will do is smoke black stuff. A 125 MAY light a cigarettes and such-provided the conditions are right.


Edit:

Im pretty sure CNI has/is planning to release a 556 nm laser on their website. I thought i saw/heard something about it but im not quite sure. Its probably there. I remember clicking it-but their website never works right for m as when i click their products it always gives me an error or simply nothing.....

555 though, is pretty much our peak. Its around the middle and we perceive that as the most sensitive light wavelength. Its probably a lot harder to make lasers that nm though....

SteelRain, we aren't talking abotu IR, we're technically talking about near-IR. The infrared burners I sell (IE, the 400-450mW +goggles for <$300 package) are 808nm. It produces a faint red dot. At close range, there's no mistaking its visibility, but its deceptively faint for a 400mW laser.

Also, CNI does make 556nm DPSS units. VERY expensive stuff though. In terms of visibility / $, you can't beat 532nm.

I tought 555.5 was the most visible wavelength.

I kinda changed my mind. After looking at many lasers i think i'd go for a green one instead. Being able to see the "beam" is much better buy i thinj now

I found out a while ago that 555nm is actually producable by using tunable dye lasers. I forget what dye, etc was used though not the realm of the handheld though.

If you make one yourself, how powerful (mW) can you make it from DVD burners? 5mW (from the turorial on how to make one) is a lot weaker than the one i want
Can it be green?

well if you purchase a Sony 16x dvd burner, the diode inside can w/stand around 300ma,w/ a proper heatsink,resistors,and what not...look for the "my DIY red shoebox laser" forum. ther is an easy schematic there to make a burning laser. ; )

JEG,
Here's a link to where you can buy a diode preinstalled in an aixiz housing:
http://sales.stonetek.org/ldi.html
Here's the link to make the driver for it:
http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1185701612
And here's a graph of the performance of the diode listed above:
(the diode is the Sony GB one)

and no it can't 'be' green. Laser colour is set in stone, at least for a particular laser. Some in the tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) are tunable, but at our price range, you pay for a colour, and that's how it stays.
DVD burner diodes are red and will stay red.

ok thanks again for answers
why can't i post any urls?
Found some sony dvd burners 18x. Very cheap only 30$. Here it's more like 150$
will a 18x do the trick?
I'm gonna make a red one then buy a gree one later
cool stuff

thanks

You need to have at least ten posts to be able to post links. And an 18x diode will be more powerful than a senkat diode since it's 16x. Just be careful when getting it out of the dvd burner because most diodes above 16x are open can and more sensitive than closed can diodes.

is there some way to calculate how many mW's a DVD burner is by just knowing its "x"?
16x etc
I found a 20x that was only 50$