Beware; the days of cheap 1mW reds have gone.

I picked up a cheap eBay "Cat Toy Laser" figuring it would be good for my cat, who is getting antsy as the weather gets cold and she can't be out chasing wildlife. I had given away my <5mW handhelds last year to kids in my family, figuring that I could always get more. I remember back before 2000 when you saw tons of the yellow bodied 1mW 660nm keychain lasers. Not anymore.

The offender: Fun Cat Toy Laser Cat Toy U s Shipper by Maxam | eBay

First off, the body is plastic which has a conductive aluminized layer on it. So, of course, the keychain loop breaks off from the torque of screwing it in to the "threads" when inserting the batteries. I press the button and WHAM... THAT AIN'T 1mW! That doesn't even look like 5mW... Grab the old LPM and it peaks at 12mW, settles at 8.4mW.

Don't use this or others like it for playing with your pets. They're going to be less than a meter from the spot and their eyes are far more sensitive than ours.

I looked through hundreds of listings on ebay and couldn't find any keychain pointers like what we used to have. All you see now are double and triple action LED combo pointers which you can see will fail after three button presses because they use plastic button mechanisms. A couple of single action ones exist, and they're either as I bought or used early 2000-2010 models that are beat to hell, with way too high of a price.

If anyone has one of those ca. 1999 style 1mW pointers they can part with, shoot me a PM.

There's an electronics fanchise here in Australia called Jaycar that still sell these chrome plated laser pointers.
My son bought me one as a gift, tested around 1mW.
Keyring Laser Pointer - Jaycar Electronics
Don't know if they'll ship o.s.

RB

Here's some pics.

Yeah, those button-battery laser pointers are usually 1mW or so. You could also put some crappy filter in the front of the laser pointer (like tape) to reduce the power.

Yeah, I was thinking about that (makeshift ND filter). I may just re-host it and add a resistor in the current path instead.

The point of the thread though is twofold;
1) those "$5 1mW reds" as we used to call them, are no longer all 1mW, and
2) they are not so cheap anymore!

I have a metal one that is stable at 3mW. Wanted to sell it a while back but kept it since it was legit 3mW all the time and its the only eye safe ones ive come across

I gave up on the key chain pointers. Don't last.....

I use one of these radiant thermal temp readers that look like a bar code scanners. They typically have a red laser in them for pointing, and the ones I've seen are < 5mW. Much easier on your thumbs and tougher to lose.

RB astro said:

Here's some pics.

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Looks like a bullet laser. Cool. My dad has one very similar. It's 1mw.

USAbro said:

Looks like a bullet laser. Cool. My dad has one very similar. It's 1mw.

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Are you sure it is 1mW, or does the sticker on the side just say 1mW? That's the whole point. We used to say these cheap reds were all <5mW always, but this is simply not true anymore.

Sigurthr said:

Are you sure it is 1mW, or does the sticker on the side just say 1mW? That's the whole point. We used to say these cheap reds were all <5mW always, but this is simply not true anymore.

Click to expand...

The cool thing is many years ago my dad brought it to his work (navybase) near Washington DC, and they were able to test it on equipment during his lunch hour! That must of been like in the year 2002 I think. They have a laser lab where he works.