Question about rare wavelength lasers...?

I tried to search for it but I couldn't find anything under "rare cost" or "cost more" in the searches... So I'll ask...

Why do rare wavelengths cost more? I mean I see these what seem to be a simple piece of copper and wire 473nm 20mw diode costs over 500$. How can that be? Is there some ingredient that is physically rarer than any other typical wavelength? I'm sure it's a simple answer and I just haven't figured it out yet. Enlighten me .

In the case of yellow lasers i believe it is because of the hard alignment and the expensive crystals. I THINK...

:thinking:

:beer:
-Matt

Well umm...
Colours regarded as rare are the yellows and the oranges, and the greeny-blues. They're not rare as such, most gas lasers are quite capable of producing these colours, but for solid-state lasers they are pretty hard to come by.

They're expensive because of the process used to produce the light. Generally with handheld lasers you have two types: the diode lasers and the Diode Pumped Solid-State (DPSS) lasers.

You should read up on wikipedia for the DPSS lasers, but in essence the difference is that the diode lasers (wavelengths like 405, 445, 520, 650) produce laser light from a single diode. DPSS lasers (wavelengths like 473, 640, 404 (doubled 808), 593.5, 589 oh and of course, 532) produce laser light by the means of pumping crystals with IR.

For example, in a 532 greenie it is an 808nm laser pumping a 1064nm laser which is doubled to 532nm.

It's much more complicated in yellows and oranges, and I don't know nearly enough to explain it.

But short answer: There's no demand. If there was some massive market demand for yellow lasers, you can trust that they'll produce a direct diode form sooner or later and sell it cheaply. For example, Blu-ray lasers started off with a DPSS 404nm before they invented the diode 405nm, which is now only slightly more expensive than the blue 445s. Or the green 520nm, which used to be exclusively produced by the DPSS 532 before people tried to make laser projectors and realised that they needed a diode green.

CheeseHasLeafs said:

...But short answer: There's no demand. If there was some massive market demand for yellow lasers, you can trust that they'll produce a direct diode form sooner or later and sell it cheaply. For example, Blu-ray lasers started off with a DPSS 404nm before they invented the diode 405nm, which is now only slightly more expensive than the blue 445s. Or the green 520nm, which used to be exclusively produced by the DPSS 532 before people tried to make laser projectors and realised that they needed a diode green.

Click to expand...

Bingo. It isn't necessarily that the lasers diodes or solid state lasers are hard to create, it is that there is no commercial need for them. No demand, no supply. Now, some solid state lasers do cost a LOT- take 500.8nm, for example. The highest power you will find is about 1mW (weaker than even the weakest of ebay pens), and it'll cost you upwards of $10,000. This is because what it takes to get the needed crystals costs a lot-they have to coat a large batch of crystals, then go through and find which will work (as to the rest of the batch, I am not sure what happens with them).

For diodes, it isn't that they are hard to make, it is that their is no demand. Similar to what we are currently seeing with the 1 Watt 520nm diodes- they are very expensive, because not many have been made. A member here by the name of "Styopyro" recently came across some 476nm diodes--he paid 500$ a piece for them. Not because they are expensive to make, but because so few were made. Get it?

I would suggest googling solid state lasers and reading the wiki page. Pretty helpful, and it is a cool process.

It's R&D costs, supply & demand, very straightforward economic principals. This is very similar to new drugs hitting the market. Some new drugs will have a very broad market for a disease like diabetes, and others a comparatively rare disease like non-Hodgkin's B-cell lymphoma. Both require enourmous up front research and developement costs which include a very lengthy FDA approval process. Both drugs might have similar up front costs (it's even possible the lymphoma drug could cost half as much to develop), but to recoup all cost and make a profit the price per dose will be drastically dissimilar. The rare disease drug may only have an annual sale of 20,000 doses where the common disease drug could have annual sales of 1 billion doses. Now do the math. I know of a drug, Tolvaptan, which has a very narrow market and costs around $1000 a dose. These laser companies have to recoup all of the up front costs to develop a new technology with sales to a very limited market. I think the Ca$10 M140 is a great example of how demand drives down prices. It became very clear where the market price for a 1-2w 445nm would come to simply by dividing the cost of a projector by 24. These "rare" colored lasers have a very niche market since only a few, now commonplace colors, meet all the demands of the general end user (I.e. Projector manufacturers, ubiquitous 5mw red laser pointers, DVD read/write units, etc).

Interesting, thanks guys. I simply thought it took like some freaky hard to come by substance to make it a certain wavelength.