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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

HElp me please

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Apr 22, 2014
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ok so im fairly new to lasers. i have had a couple smaller ones, but nothing serious. im looking for a green laser that can light fireworks, matches, and pop black baloons.(but as they say, more is better) i want it to be reliable and i prefer fast shipping. my budget is limited so i was hoping around 30-40 dollars, but i could probably go higher if that's low for a good laser.(again, not much experience i don't know how much these things cost.) i also want to avoid Wicked lasers. i bought a 100mw green laser from them about a year ago for ~$130. It took three months to ship, and was broken on arrival. i called several times and couldn't get a new laser or a refund.
Thanks
-charlie
 





Teej

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ok so im fairly new to lasers. i have had a couple smaller ones, but nothing serious. im looking for a green laser that can light fireworks, matches, and pop black baloons.(but as they say, more is better) i want it to be reliable and i prefer fast shipping. my budget is limited so i was hoping around 30-40 dollars, but i could probably go higher if that's low for a good laser.(again, not much experience i don't know how much these things cost.) i also want to avoid Wicked lasers. i bought a 100mw green laser from them about a year ago for ~$130. It took three months to ship, and was broken on arrival. i called several times and couldn't get a new laser or a refund.
Thanks
-charlie

Welcome A Board!

:D

You might need a higher budget for burning with a green laser...

And, yeah, Wicked is actually considered to be Wicked around here.

Would you consider a Blue Laser? Generally, Blue is better for burning.
 
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I could go blue but i read that green was generally cheaper so that's what i went for. also i am willing to move my budget a little bit but i'm hoping for it to be as cheap as possible, while still being reliable and powerful
 
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Please, please buy proper safety wear before even buying such a device. Such a laser could easily cause injury to yourself or others(if mishandled) and can even BLIND you/others before you/they even realized what happened to your/their eyes.

Below are some recommended goggles to protect your eyes. This pair which will protect you from BOTH 532nm & 445nm and are highly recommended around these forums:
Eagle Pair® 190-540nm Standard Laser Safety Goggles

Edit: Green is cheaper in the lower powers. 500mW of blue will cost you a LOT less than 500mW of green.

-Alex
 
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Haha. thanks for the concern but fortunately the laser i bought from wicked lasers came with glasses
 
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Personally I wouldn't even trust a watermelon to wear the laser goggle from Wicked Laser. There are a few reported Epic Fails here regarding BOTH lasers and goggles from Wicked Lasers.

Ditch it and spend more on better one for given wattage (I have bought mine for $13, but that was for my 70mW 520nm laser, and may do ok for diffused reflection by 200mW or powerful diode laser, still I will not try). Cheap goggle are much worse than not wearing one at all, who know how much have traded in $5 goggles from WL for white canes?
 
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before you buy your safety glasses, you want to decide what color your laser will be. I recommend blue lasers if you want to ignite things, but be aware that some things burn better than others with light. A new candle wick is brilliant white and all i managed to do was slowly disintegrate it, never igniting it. Meanwhile a newspaper went up in flames, a hot dog sizzled and popped while turning black, and leather looked like I took a wood burner to it. Basically the more white or reflective a material, the more power you will need to ignite it.

The color of the laser determines the color and chemical of the lens for safety glasses. Generally speaking, Blue lasers and red lasers use opposite colored lenses. Green laser goggles don't do too well against infra and red, nor against violet and ultra violet. However, some glasses cover a large spectrum. The balance of that is how little light from other colors gets through. When I wear my safety goggles, its like Cyclops (Xmen) Vision. I feel safe, but i can't see hardly anything. My pretty beams just become bland boring dots on whatever they are pointed at.

So first decide the laser you want. Green lasers are normally two different colors spliced together i think, It's been a long time since I studied this stuff, but green are more expensive because of the process used in making a green color. Blue lasers will cost about the same to double the price of your safety goggles, and I'm not familiar with recent prices, but you can expect to pay about 60 cents to a dollar per 10 miliwatts, and if its got some mondo DNA scraping bezelwork in a custom host, expect to pay triple.
 
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upaa27

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Welcome to the forum!

For your questions I would say a 50mw blue should do the trick nicely for lighting matches etc. Also, Wicked lasers are pretty much the forum's archenemy(we will wage war with our 6w handhelds soon) so I dont recommend buying from them. Hope this helps and good luck. :)
 
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50mW? More like 500mW

Here's a video from youtube showing what to expect from 50mW green.
50mw laser FOCALPRICE.COM unboxing and testing - YouTube


You'll find several people in this forum can build you a blue laser in 500mW range, but if your location has regulations (i.e. closer to 50mW rather than the monsters with daylight visible beams), you might get better performance out of a Green laser, which will produce a much finer pin point dot for much longer distances. As flashlight enthusiasts might say, to really drive home the differences, blue lasers have a lot of flood (light diffuses in the area), as lasers go, and green lasers have a lot of throw (range with a concentrated beam).
 
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I gotta agree with Shintashi - with some catch. Light wavelength (light color) vs surface color absorption matters a lot. (Ever wonder why the black surface in the Sun is painful to touch, while white surface was barely warm?)

Actually, this is also the reason the laser goggles are rated that way for the selected wavelength cutoff (for my 520nm green diode laser, I wear red goggle for dealing with the possibility of accidental reflection). However, if you wanna ignite something with the laser, surface color MATTERS A LOT: While I can almost immediately ignite the red match with 70mW green laser at focal point, that would take much longer with both white and / or green match heads.

Yet, as you approach the ultraviolet spectra, weird things start to occur, the surface color probably will no longer matter much (the reason somebody wanting to buy the bare Blu-ray Disc burner diode would be informed to be cautious with that diode). It's possible to pop the balloon with 50mW 404nm diode.
 
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Mario is right, different colors of the same power supply will burn more or less efficiently. My purple lasers mW for mW burn most things better than my blue, and the red lasers I've made might as well be laser pointers used in the class room.

Someone should make a chart of ignition times with a ROYGBIV + Black/White target set of comparable color targets and other common targets like wood, leather, and "ouch" - although it's not recommended it might still be useful to know which laser frequency hurts finger tips fastest, since that's where most of us get burned adjusting the focus lens. :eg:
 
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You'll find several people in this forum can build you a blue laser in 500mW range

I really hope you are wrong. Most experienced builders on this site will not build a high power laser for someone with no experience. Too many potential issues.

Imagine selling a laser to someone and two days later they are arrested on felony charges for pointing it at a plane. The guys who built it would feel awful and could cause problem with forums like this. That is one of the reason most PL members shy away from LPF.

Best focusing diodes I've seen are the 405's. I've burned things with well under 50mw.
 
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Imagine selling a laser to someone and two days later they are arrested on felony charges for pointing it at a plane.

*cough* Kipkay... *cough*

However, some honest sellers will test the buyers' intelligence and how they will handle even a bare diode, and if they say they don't have the glasses or even mention "I am noob about a laser" or some derpy comments off the book, they will be refused anything over 5mW (even though green laser is apparently the most to have a bad rap from FAA or any aircraft traffic authorities).

Yet, icecruncher, you brought up a good point. As for the probability of an eye damage, wavelength won't matter if wattage is slightly higher than 2mW (it's the heat, not color that will destroy the eyeballs, or more accurately the retina), so I don't recommend pointing at the planes with any lasers (be it visible, Infrared or Ultraviolet).
 




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