Green laser resurrected mysteriously.

6 months ago, my green laser pointer seemed to have died after a plane flight. When I unpacked it, I noticed is was only giving a dim red light. After much troubleshooting, I figured it was turned-on for too long by the packing material surrounding it, and was toasted. I replaced it weeks later, but got it confused with the working one recently. I was surprised to find it working again (just a bit dimmer) just a couple weeks ago.

Any idea what had happened? Possibly arriving frozen in checked luggage in hot, humid Florida? Maybe it took a couple months to dry out when I returned to the high desert of the Mojave?

it's all very possible as the crystals are extremely sensitive to cold temperatures as well as moisture, last night it was around 15F (-9C) and my 35mw green laser would mode hop, making a strange dot and a large crescent shape a bit away from the dot - some lasers will cease to output 532nm light and the dim red you saw was probably a face full of IR light

MarioMaster said:

.. the dim red you saw was probably a face full of IR light

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Yeow.. I was looking down the barrel of a gun, huh? One of the dangers of being a newbie, I guess.
Funny, it was just today that I learned that my greenee was most likely a DPSS. Now, it's temperature sensitivity make sense. Is it the KTP that needs the warmth?

Don't ask questions, just be happy!

Nah, trying to figure out why something did what it did is good.

Shit guys, you really scared me, seems my DX 30mW will arrive broken :-/

dataplumber9 said:

[quote author=MarioMaster link=1199389900/0#1 date=1199392641].. the dim red you saw was probably a face full of IR light

Click to expand...

Yeow.. I was looking down the barrel of a gun, huh? One of the dangers of being a newbie, I guess.
Funny, it was just today that I learned that my greenee was most likely a DPSS. Now, it's temperature sensitivity make sense. Is it the KTP that needs the warmth?[/quote]

If you have a green pointer it's 100% it is DPSS.It would make sense that the dim red dot is actually 808nm radiation, but I vaguely recall reading about well IR filtered lasers(nova) doing the same in the cold.

Switch said:

If you have a green pointer it's 100% it is DPSS....

Click to expand...

This only slowly became apparent to me after reading a few LPF threads. Previously, I thought my green pointers were essentially no different than red or blue laser diodes. As a result, I'm even more impressed with the physics and technology behind the greenies.

IF there is ir filtering, why would the nova lasers output the reddish ir light in extreme conditions? shouldn't it output NOTHING in this case?

no filter is good enough to filter out evey thing i believe they have it down to 98% and 98% of 500mw is 10mw of ir that comes out of the filter