X65 Here!

I ordered an X65 last Tuesday.. it arrived today (Saturday)! Not bad, about five days to ship.

Actually my timing on ordering this thing turned out not so good.. SenKat just completed his group buy on those lovely 250 mW red laser rocks. I really wanted to order some of those diodes but I decided to get the greenie instead.

Anyway, if the numbers on the box are correct it has a peak of 92 mW and an average of > 80 mW - not bad for a laser listed as 65 mW. I haven't even turned it on yet, waiting for things to get a bit darker. I'll post some more images later. I'm was surprised how light the package is, and how tiny and light the pointer is. The first greenie I ordered in late 2001 was 5mW and cost more than the X65 ($150.00). They've definitely refined the technology - the X65 is over 10x as strong and cost less than my first greenie (Z-bolt), 5-6 years ago now.

This is my first laser that's hopefully powerful enough to burn stuff. Any suggestions on how to test it - what colored balloons to use, what type of matches (do they need to be sharpie)?

(Tried to post an image link but I was not permitted to do this... OK)

You are gonna love it, man ! It should burn sharpied matches just fine - any dark colored objects will definitely fall prey to it ;D ;D ;D Black is of course the best colour (spelled correctly for my friends over the pond ! LOL) to use for balloons, but blue would work well too. Take a roll of electrical tape and stick one end to the edge of a table, and let the roll hang. Sit a little bit away from the table edge, and using the arm of a chair or your legs, steady your hand, and turn it on, moving slowly - you will slice that sucker in half Be patient, as it can take almost a minute to do so - make sure you follow the duty cycle for that, too - 60 secs on, and 15 secs off Have FUN, too !

I'm able to pop blue sharpied balloons out to 7-10 feet (not using a lens). After that it falls off quick, I did get one pop at about 12 feet but it took over 10 seconds. I tried the electrical tape trick.. almost strong enough to cut, but not quite. From about a foot away I got the tape to smoke instantly (and heavily), after dragging the laser across it for 30 seconds (about the longest I care to leave it on) I got about halfway across the tape, but it wasn't cleanly cut.

No matter, I primarily got this laser for visual use, and it IS strong enough to do some burning tricks.

Really bright.. ridiculous really.

Is is safe to use Energizer e^2 lithium batts in this thing? The instructions seem to want to stick with alka, but I'm thinking this pointer would benefit from a battery with less internal resistance than alks.

Why can't I post image links? Ug. A few below for those that want to copy and paste

Just out of the box:
www.fractalfreak.com/wx/X65_1.jpg

Lighting up the dark kitchen. The beam look fat cuz I had trouble holding the laser still during the exposure.
www.fractalfreak.com/wx/X65_2.jpg

****Fixed the links for you You will be able to post links and such after 20 posts....****

I was able to slice through the electrical tape in less than 30 seconds. Actually well under 10 seconds up close.. this thing cuts plastic!! The trick was to weight the tape a bit to help pull it apart as the laser cut. Damn I didn't realize how nasty electrical tape smells when it burns :-/

I really wanted to get a laser from Wicked, but the price was so much better on the NOVA laser. I also like how they write - by hand - on each box what the peak and average power of the laser is - no BS or guessing.

Yeah I'm really happy with the x65. Wanted to thank you for your X-85 review, SenKat. I don't think I would have ordered a laser from these people otherwise. I think I made a good choice. I was thinking a DX laser but decided that was too much of a lottery. Glad I shelled out a little more for what appears to be a decent pointer.

If I do get another high powered greenie it'll likely be something from laserglow. I want a longer duty cycle.

I don't want to dis any laser sellers out there. If I could I'd support them all. In the past I spent a lot of time at Wicked's laser pointer forums, and I think Steve was pretty gracious to allow as much talk about other brands as he did. And I did get a nice free core laser from him. It's just the prices are so much better on these new CNIs I had to go with one.

Hey - you are welcome for the review - and I LOVED reviewing it ! I hear ya about Wicked's forum - at least now, there is no pretenses - you KNOW it is run by WL, and if you don;t like the way the topics go, then you can pick up your toys and leav there to come here, or elsewhere ! I like the fact that it is at least consistent now (from what I have heard !)

Yeah - the Nova's pleasantly surprised me with them testing the lasers so well - it seems that after as many orders as there have been, that there has been only one laser go out taht was bad - those are fairly good odds, IMO.

Took my x65 out last night, finally. Beam is so bright at night. I mean if you want to attract attention this will do it. I was along the shore of a lake, and I painted a water tower on the opposite shore. Almost exactly 3 miles away - I checked using google maps (lol). I had to brace the laser on a log to hold it steady, but I could easily see the spot where it impacted the tower. Along with a few gasps and OMGs!!! from boaters and other people in the vicinity. That's a common reaction from people that have never seen a bright greenie - OMG!!!

Been burning lots of black plastic things. This laser is right on the threshold of being a burning laser. Just enough power to start to burn things. Can easily tattoo any black plastic items, actually take little craters out of them. This fascinates the pyro in me. It took many 30 second burns, but I eventually punched a hole through the side of my mouse. heh. looks like a lunar crater. I've really been molesting my mouse with this pointer, ill post a picture eventually. Another thing I've found that burns well are feathers. These are green/black feathers from a cat-toy, and it's easy to cut them in half using the laser (they really stink tho).

You get these interesting patterns in the reflected light when you burn stuff. As the surface melts and vaporizes. It's a way you can tell the laser is burning something even if you see no smoke. I was burning a black watch band and the reflected pattern on the ceiling was mesmerizing. Same thing when reflecting the laser of an old LCD watch face.

My biggest annoyance with the laser is the duty cycle. The pump diode probably consumes 1-2 watts (at least), and the tiny pointer just doesn't have enough mass to handle the heat. You can feel how quickly the laser heats up when you use it. I think the 100 sec on/10 sec off listed duty cycle is very optimistic. I would say more like 30 secs on/2-3 minutes off. Once the pointer heats up to much beyond body temperature (40 C) it's probably a good idea to let it cool off (this takes more than 10 seconds!!) before using it or you'll likely end up shortening the life of the pump diode.

They pump it with a 500mw 808nm. But yea you will feel the heat pretty quick. The second one I have gotten from NOVA likes to be hot though.


Get us some pics of that beast in action. I personally love videos if you can

Another fun thing to burn through are old floppy discs. It has taken me quite awhile to burn through one close to the middle, but it takes less tome when burning through the edge of a floppy. This is with my DIY red. Burning through the actual disk takes no time at all.

Greenie said:

They pump it with a 500mw 808nm. But yea you will feel the heat pretty quick. The second one I have gotten from NOVA likes to be hot though.


Get us some pics of that beast in action. I personally love videos if you can

Click to expand...

That's the output power of the LD (500 mW). However since no devices are 100% efficient at converting electricity to light, the input power is likely at least twice as much.... OK I just checked. An average pump diode will drop 2.2 volts and requires 600-700 mA to reach rated output. Power consumption (volts * amps) is thus ~1.4 watts. Note that this is still a very good quantum efficiency - over 1/3 of the incoming power gets converted to 808 nm light. An incandescent bulb, for example, typically only converts 5% of the power going through it to light (the rest lost as heat)

I would be taking videos if I had some sort of recorder! Unfortunately I've only got an old 2 megapixel camera. I need to invest in some other gadgets besides lasers.. lol.

My laser seems to like it hot also.

Few more observations on my X65. I've noticed that it mode hops while warming up. Starting within 10 seconds of power up it will flip between TEM00 and TEM01 (two dots nearly touching). After 60-90 seconds of warming up it will snap back to TEM00 and stay there as long as the pointer is at least body temperature warm. I guess this isn't surprising considering how quickly the pointer warms up, the thermal pulses ripping through it as it heats up are probably warping the resonator cavity. I noticed this while I was burning my mouse.. see image below. The pointer seems to be tuned to hit peak power once it's warm.

One thing the mode hopping has shown is how important a TEM00 beam is for burning. If the beam switches to TEM01 it's nearly worthless for burning. However once it's warmed up this thing is a torch. Within a foot smoke will instantly gush from black plastic objects when hit.

I can't believe how quickly the pointer flattens batteries. It's astonishing. I've found that Ni-MH rechargeables work best, better than alkalines (I've yet to try disposable lithiums). Alkalines seem to fade quicker than the rechargeables, and these are duracell utltras. After warming up peak burning power doesn't last much longer than 5 minutes. After that you can put a fork in the batteries. They last longer than 5 minutes of course, but that's the peak. Fun while it lasts though.

You can see the gash I burned into the side of my mouse. This is a few days of occasionally chipping away at it. I stopped before burning through and I got tired of inhaling those nasty burning plastic fumes. I did burn a hole through on the other side of the mouse.

Anyway I'm still really happy with the pointer, despite the mode hopping during warm up. It seems to like it hot.. I'm not certain how long the pump diode will hold out, but damn it's amazing something this small can pack as much of punch as it does.

(pic - you'll have to copy and paste, i can't yet post images  )
http://fractalfreak.com/wx/tattoo_mouse.jpg

**edit-fixed link**

flogged said:

Few more observations on my X65. I've noticed that it mode hops while warming up. Starting within 10 seconds of power up it will flip between TEM00 and TEM01 (two dots nearly touching). After 60-90 seconds of warming up it will snap back to TEM00 and stay there as long as the pointer is at least body temperature warm. I guess this isn't surprising considering how quickly the pointer warms up, the thermal pulses ripping through it as it heats up are probably warping the resonator cavity. I noticed this while I was burning my mouse.. see image below. The pointer seems to be tuned to hit peak power once it's warm.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what my X105 does on low batteries. I'm wonderin if it might even be TEM02 because the main beam has two dots and then there is a third internal reflection from the mode hop. But when newly charged batteries are put in it works fine again.