Need some help finding a laser for effect...

Hi there, I always hate to ask noob questions but I have done a lot of research and have decided that it would save me days of searching by simply asking those of you who are experts on lasers and know your stuff.

So.......I have turned my garage into a small nightclub for parties with my friends and I would like to use a green laser in conjunction with several small mirrors to created a neat effect above everyone's heads (like an advanced alarm system). My question is, can someone recommend a good laser to use for this purpose? Obviously it needs to have a continuous duty cycle as it will be on for several hours at a time (given an estimated 3 hr run time). If necessary I can rig a momentary switch to stay on, but a standard on/off button would be nice. The room is approximately 12'x26' and it will always be dark with fog when the laser is on. My budget is around $130 right now. I'm hoping that some of you will have something in mind that will work for me. Thank you for your time and thanks in advance for any advice!

Whitey

If you want something like this effect??



You will only need 5-20mw max... since green light is more receptive to the human eye, and with fog and a dark room, it will add to the easy of viewing. This low range power will also be beneficial since if anything actually goes wrong, and the laser does fall onto the crowd, the chances of eye damage is reduced, but certainly not eradicated.

My suggestion is this, buy a 5mw module from o-like off ebay, or contact them directly for a module. Put that inside a small heat sink, about the size of a computer's CPU heat sink, and maybe add a fan for good measure.

If this is the desired effect, I suggest buying one of these

COPAL POLYGON MIRROR LASER SCANNER - Surplus Shed

Basically point the laser on it, it will reflect on an angle and make a liquid sky effect. This effect is really cool because you can put your fingers in the way of the beam, and see the shadow followed down the path.

I suggest that you buy some 532nm laser goggles, so when you are setting up and aligning the laser, you will not have any accident. Also when you want to get a portable laser, you will already have a pair of goggles ready to go.

Have fun, be safe, think about what you are doing. -Adrian

I suggest that the Axixz lab lasers are both cheap and a bit brighter, with just a bit of smoke or fog, it will be very visible and although mine are rated 15 mW and 50 mW, costs were just about $55 or so ea. they are doing 68mW and 135 mW so, with some luck, you may get a bit of over spec power. -Glenn

I agree.... a Labby style Laser is what you will need..
Here is a link to a trusted seller on eBay...

50mw DPSS 532nm green laser module with TTL modulation on eBay.ca (item 130384721944 end time 20-May-10 09:01:50 EDT)


Jerry

Thanks so much for the reply guys. I hadn't even thought about a lab style laser, and certainly didn't know that they were so cheap and easy to find. That's definitely the route I will take.

Oh and Bob......thanks for the tutorial on the liquid sky effect. That's something that I may look toward doing in the near future. For now I'm just focusing on a reflected beam.

btw......bob.....I was reading about the laser scanner that you posted a link to and noticed that it comes with a 16 pin connection and requires 24VDC. How many of those wires am I going to need to be concerned about? Can I simply find the two power wires and connect them to a 24vdc power supply? Just trying to figure out what else I might be getting into if I decide to go that route someday. Thanks!

Its a bipolar or possibly a tripolar stepper motor. The pins are used for each coil in the motor, depending on the poles of the stepper motor will determine the amount of wires you will connect to the 24v input. The rest of the wires are for motor feed back and other factors that do not need to be worried about. You best bet is to talk to kiyoukan because I'm pretty sure he was going to do the same thing.

PS: you might want to send the company an email and find out as much as you can on the motor.

Hope that helped. -Adrian

That certainly helps. Thank you!

You might think about doing the reflected beam in RED and the liquid sky effect in GREEN.

I had thought about that, and it would certainly look awesome, but I have yet to convince myself to attempt the liquid sky effect since I'm so new to lasers. Thanks for the suggestion though :yh:

Here's another noob question for someone.... most of the lasers I'm finding on ebay and other sites have the corresponding circuit board with them, which from what I've read so far I would guess is the module, or what I think they're calling "TTL Modulation". So my question is..... is that circuit board ready to hook up to a 120V power cord coming from a 20A wall outlet? or am I going to have to have a power supply that brings the amperage down? Obviously since most of them are coming from China I don't expect them to come with a U.S. cord attached to them, I just want to make sure that I'm not going to need any other electronics if I buy something like what lasersbee posted.
Thanks for your help, being a noobie sucks. lol

If you are talking about the item that Lasersbee was pointing out, that circuit board is called a driver. It give constant current to diode/module. If you read up on the specs of the laser it says that it is ready to go with a 90-240vac input. So you are ready to go!

-Adrian