A slightly hesitant recommendation - 300mW 532nm

I wouldn't have posted this a month ago - but after my recent purchase of a $126 "power certified 300mW" 532nm laser from DinoDirect, that ended up hitting closer to 400mW at it's peak, I'm less hesitant.

That particular laser shot up in price to $200 the day after I received mine, but I just spotted a similar deal on their site:

($167) Firedragon- 300mW
And hey, while I'm at it:
($299) Firedragon- 500mW

Your mileage may vary. This isn't the exact same model as mine, and I don't know the extent to which their "power certified" series are stood behind. However, in my case it showed up over-spec, substantially, so no complaints. I'm not endorsing this, just pointing it out. (nor is there any referral code, or other shenanigans like that). Pursue at your own risk.

+1 for the lucky buy
-lets hope it has a good lifetime,

what duty/rest cycle was recommended ? or was there one?

Pics please and a description of the spot- any mod hopping? any artifacts , wings etc? is it IR filtered-

how much variance in mileage will I get?????lol

Will I be able to destroy red light cameras, pop matches, burn balloons and others very useful and groovy things???
hak

There was not even an instruction card No mention of duty cycle anywhere. The battery spring on mine broke, so I disassembled the whole thing. Ended up replacing the on/off switch with a momentary. I don't use long duty cycles anyway - it's just not how I use lasers - and I love momentary clickies.

In the process, I also turned DOWN the pot, if you can believe that
Now I get 250mW when run from an 18650 and 350mW when run from 2x 16340s. The driver itself is pretty amazing. It's actually in two pieces. The entire IC is located off the driver board itself, in it's own compartment sandwiched inside the heatsink.

Well thanks for all that info-very interesting.
I once wrote a china seller about the Duty cycle and i think he thought I was talking about a bicycle. Another one I wrote about the spring falling off the driver board and they asked "are you referring to the bounce'? babblefish- babble babble.

You know that they may have cherry picked taht one just for you.

too bad the price has jumped.

But I am swearing off buying anything not for use in my projector projects.(sorta)

hak

hakzaw1 said:

You know that they may have cherry picked taht one just for you.

Click to expand...

They may have - although I actually tried to avoid something like that happening by not announcing my purchase openly here. I don't believe they would have been able to correlate my presence here with the purchase details either.

Having said that, I think their "power certified" stuff is probably going to be up to spec, if for no reason other than that payments are going through paypal, and I'd bet half the people shelling out ~$200 for a "power certified" laser are expecting to LPM it at some point. Lots of complaints if these weren't actually metered ahead of time like they claim.

I must say, I've had a lot of gripes about their business practices in the past, but they're the first chinese gadget site (except for John with PA) that has actually started LPMing stuff. I have to give them props for that at least - I mean it's what we're always telling those sites to do.

They prolly did not cherry pick then. Thats good. Post up some pics for us when you get a chance. I got some 532s from Fokallprice and had to do similar repairs to what you did- the switches were junk- I ended up using the 50 mW modules in other (mini labs for lumia) hosts and plan to use the FP hosts with other diodes(prolly LOCs)with better switches. There were VERY cheap(14$ when buying three) so no complaints from me.

Since you disassembled yours, can you tell me about the crystals?

Are they the bonded type or are the Nd:YVO4 and KTP separate?

I'll shoot up pics once I make it through finals next week.

I've got a lot of laser-catching-up to do. Including my 200mW 635nm pointer build. So the forum is going to have to suffer through a lot of RHD spamming, lol.

I know there used to be the common wisdom that $1 bought you 1mW of 532, but it makes sense that green prices would fall. Relatively speaking, the really high powered IR c-mounts aren't actually that expensive. You can grab a 4W IR c-mount for under $100 resale. Wholesale I'm sure the cost is under half that. So you have to figure that that's enough juice to make the ~600mW range greens. The drivers are probably a few bucks more expensive, and the crystals + workmanship quality needs to be higher - but that's exactly the kind of stuff China is good at improving / streamlining.

So while blue/red/violet diodes are going to fluctuate in cost proportional to the number of bulk consumer devices they get integrated into, I think green DPSS is just going to improve mw/$ somewhat more steadily as China gets better and better at making it.

RA_pierce said:

Since you disassembled yours, can you tell me about the crystals?

Are they the bonded type or are the Nd:YVO4 and KTP separate?

Click to expand...

No clue - this is exactly (100%) what the module looks like:
300mW solid green laser module/adjustable/IR filtered [OL-532M-300] - $229.00 : Welcome to O-Like.com, Your source for laser products
No way to get a glimpse of the crystals without tampering with the module (that I didn't want to touch)

See the blue button at the rear? That's the driver's "board". The metal part that is thick in the middle, where the screws are, that comes apart and the module is in two pieces. The laser diode and crystals are still entirely contained inside the front, with just two wires coming out. The driver's IC get's sandwiched (rather ingeniously) between the two halves (the laser assembly, and the rear driver board "tray" area). Then wires connect the driver tray to the IC, and the IC into the laser assembly.

I've actually kleptod the design principal with my latest 1085 driver 445 build. I arctic-silvered the IC to the heatsink, and then just ran wires down to the resistors, caps, protective diode, switch, etc of my host. It really makes sense to separate the IC from the board itself, and place it on LD heatsink.

If they are IR filtered they would be a good deal...
There is no mention of IR filtering on DinoDirect's
site like on O-Like's site...

I would imagine stating they were IR Filtered would
be a selling point any savvy Chinese seller wouldn't
overlook...

Jerry

You'd think - but they are.

Without the lens assembly attached (where I believe the IR filter is), I was reading almost 550mW output.

I'm not saying I don't believe you.... but...

Have you used an external IR filter to see if there
is a difference in output???
Unless you can specifically Identify the IR filter in the
Laser.... that is the only way to be sure....

Jerry

Yep - sort of.
I used green/blue blocking glasses that pass red (and thus I'm presuming infrared) in front of the final output. The result was ~25mW. Given that a bit of green was actually leaking through onto the sensor, it wouldn't shock me if that 25mW wasn't even itself IR.

I just did a small test...

I have IR OD4 goggles here that let 650nm through just fine
but blocks IR...

I have another pair of 630-650nm Goggles that lets IR go
through...

Maybe your Blocking glasses are broadband....

I still think a true IR filter would be needed to be sure if the
Laser does in fact have an IR Filter...

He!! are you willing to risk your eyesight using 532nm goggles
to protect you from 808nm and 1064nm from a DPSS Laser
that is outputting 550nm Green that has not been properly
verified for an IR Filter....
I wouldn't......

Jerry

Ok, but I have non-filtered 532nm lasers too, and the same glasses let tons of the IR from those through

- Glasses that I know let IR through, and block 532nm, resulted in only ~25mW hitting the sensor, and that was with a bit of green visibly leaking through the glasses themselves. The LPM was hitting 300mW + without the glasses in line. So I hate to tell you but I think it's pretty clear that the Dino laser is filtered.

I wish you were right, because it would be pretty useful if the cheapo blue/green blocking glasses also wonderfully protected against IR. But they don't.

Well if you say so....
They are not my eyes....

Guess I'm just overly safe and try to test 100% before
putting myself in harms way...:beer:

Jerry