Tough balloon!

Yesterday a friend of mine stopped over, a regular guy who is not too much into lasers. Typically, the little CNI 532 pen I have will pop a black or purple balloon just about instantly when your within 2 feet of it. So here I go telling this guy some of the pointless (but interesting) things that handhelds can do. I fully inflate a 12" black balloon for him and hand over the laser (55mW). He puts the dot on the balloon, holds it steady and nothing.. rotates the balloon a little, still nothing. Moves closer, nothing. Rotates again, nothing. Places the laser on a box for better stability, nothing.

So, a little stumped I grab the other PGL-III 90mW and have him try that. He holds it steady and it appears that nothing is happening, after a few seconds he releases the button and looks at the balloon to find a decent size pinhole shooting out a jet of air lol. The balloon refuses to pop with my weak little lasers. :crackup: I must have gotten a special batch of balloons or something. Of course, it has to fail while trying to "show off" the laser.

Today I see the balloon on the kitchen floor and it looks like this...




And here is the pinhole from the PGL-III



I laughed when I saw the condition of the balloon today. The laser was doing something, just not quite enough.

Blow'er up some more, that usually helps when they puncture instead of pop. Or you just have some high quality balloons.

Call the balloon manufacture up and complain about the quality of the balloons, tell them they should pop easier under 532nm light.

This should be in the "you might be a laser enthusiast if" thread
"you call up a balloon manufacturer and complain that the balloons dont pop easy enough" :crackup:

I have had a few tough balloons out of the same bag as the regular ones.
I do this thing to show people, where I blow-up a black balloon inside of a white one.
Using 650 or 405, pop the inside black one but not the outside white one.
Tried it 10-12 times, worked perfect, brought the set-up over to a friends house and neither balloon would pop.
Even the 258mW 650 from 2' feet, would not pop it.
I was like; "I swear it works, I've done it a bunch, It always works"
When I was back home, I took a couple random balloons out of the bag and measured them.
They ranged from 90 to 265 microns thick.
Chinese build their balloons like they do their cheap lasers.
No quality control at all!

Greenmechanic said:

I have had a few tough balloons out of the same bag as the regular ones.
I do this thing to show people, where I blow-up a black balloon inside of a white one.
Using 650 or 405, pop the inside black one but not the outside white one.
Tried it 10-12 times, worked perfect, brought the set-up over to a friends house and neither balloon would pop.
Even the 258mW 650 from 2' feet, would not pop it.
I was like; "I swear it works, I've done it a bunch, It always works"
When I was back home, I took a couple random balloons out of the bag and measured them.
They ranged from 90 to 265 microns thick.
Chinese build their balloons like they do their cheap lasers.
No quality control at all!

Click to expand...

I just LOL'd. I completely understand where you are coming from. I'd imagine that this is the case. Interesting on the white/black thing, I'll have to try it.

Haha nice! It would be a huge waste, but I have a 40" black balloon that I could pop. JusT be such a waste because larger ones cost more. I have some 10ft by 20" balloons too.

Never seen a balloon do that unless it was underinflated or had oil put on it. Funny

It seems you sometimes just get one thats extra tough... i've had this happen a couple of times - i was also puzzled why it wouldnt pop even with long and steady exposure. I found similar little holes and it slowly deflated.

I'm not sure what makes the difference between just making a small hole vs the balloon exploding instantly - could be material thickness, but also composition etc.

Well that's odd!

I can imagine that a balloon with a thicker wall and not inflated to the limit might resist the laser trick... a laser beam pokes a hole differently than a needle. The needle will make a microscopic rip and the surface tension will make it bigger instantly. A tightly focused laser beam will poke a perfectly round hole and the heat might "heal" the edges of the hole, thus slowly deflating the balloon without bursting it.

But I have to admit that saying to your friends during a demo "No really guys, it works for real!" kinda sucks! LOL
- Robert

The whole-with-protected edges is exactly what happens when you look at the balloon after it deflated - its a puncture where the plastic seems to have molten and solidified on the edge.

Greenmechanic said:

I have had a few tough balloons out of the same bag as the regular ones.
I do this thing to show people, where I blow-up a black balloon inside of a white one.
Using 650 or 405, pop the inside black one but not the outside white one.
Tried it 10-12 times, worked perfect, brought the set-up over to a friends house and neither balloon would pop.
Even the 258mW 650 from 2' feet, would not pop it.
I was like; "I swear it works, I've done it a bunch, It always works"
When I was back home, I took a couple random balloons out of the bag and measured them.
They ranged from 90 to 265 microns thick.
Chinese build their balloons like they do their cheap lasers.
No quality control at all!

Click to expand...

Shortly after you had made this post, I did exactly what you described.. put a black balloon inside of a white balloon, and blew the white balloon up a little more. It had been sitting around in my living room up until this morning when I decided to test what you said happens.. The only thing is, I didn't exactly play within the rules. I was using a 12x BR.. it nearly instantly popped the white balloon and left the black balloon alone!!! I released the lasers power button right away, so I guess it had just enough to rip the outside balloon. (it's fun when completely unexpected things happen!) I gave another blip of BR at the black balloon and it popped. I then went around and shredded all the white and yellow balloons that were left (that my greens were not able to pop). :gun:

Thanks to laserboy for the awesome new BR.