HELP! Wanting to build a 200mw+ green laser

Hello, Im a new member here with a fair amount of electronics background, Ive looked around a bit on these forums and cant seem to find any guides for constructing a 200mw or higher laser and have a few questions about the subject.

I apologies in advanced for the n00bness of my questions  

1. it seems that green LD's don't get that powerful and it is necessary to  "pump" the green color from an IR "open can"? is this true or am i just totally off?

2. is the reason i cant find much info on this because its just too much of a pain in the butt to do this?

3. even if i can find a good tut, it seems most places sell parts geared towards sub 200mw greenies. are there any good online stores?

4. how much will 200-250mw green laser cost (im prepared to spend about 400 bucks on materials)

5. is 532nm the best to get for green? so far its the only part of the green spectrum i have been able to find as far as LDs go.

Thanks in advance!

--Chris

djra said:

Hello, Im a new member here with a fair amount of electronics background, Ive looked around a bit on these forums and cant seem to find any guides for constructing a 200mw or higher laser and have a few questions about the subject.

I apologies in advanced for the n00bness of my questions  

1. it seems that green LD's don't get that powerful and it is necessary to  "pump" the green color from an IR "open can"? is this true or am i just totally off?

2. is the reason i cant find much info on this because its just too much of a pain in the butt to do this?

3. even if i can find a good tut, it seems most places sell parts geared towards sub 200mw greenies. are there any good online stores?

4. how much will 200-250mw green laser cost (im prepared to spend about 400 bucks on materials)

5. is 532nm the best to get for green? so far its the only part of the green spectrum i have been able to find as far as LDs go.

Thanks in advance!

--Chris

Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum.

Green diodes really don't exist. Well, they do, but they would cost thousands of dollars, and would be a custom order from a company, all for an unstable, ~2mW, green diode. You could build your own DPSS system with a pump diode and crystals, but it would be a very involved project; hours spent aligning the crystals for optimum effieciancy. 532nm isn't the "best" in terms of visability, (555nm is) but is the only wavelength currently possible with the DPSS process. For buying a greenie of that power, it would cost you around $750 from optotronics http://www.optotronics.com/rpl-green-lasers.php. And don't worry; most of the newbie questions on here are much worse. How i mak ma dollar store red lit match??????

LRMNmeyer said:

532nm isn't the "best" in terms of visability, (555nm is) but is the only wavelength currently possible with the DPSS process.

Click to expand...

473nm blue lasers and 593nm yellow lasers also use DPSS technology to achieve their wavelength. Diodes are not available at these wavelengths either. There are some blue diodes that are closer to 473nm, but they are an extremely recent development, and are still quite difficult to find.

ElektroFreak said:

[quote author=LRMNmeyer link=1227134227/0#1 date=1227137006] 532nm isn't the "best" in terms of visability, (555nm is) but is the only wavelength currently possible with the DPSS process.

Click to expand...

473nm blue lasers and 593nm yellow lasers also use DPSS technology to achieve their wavelength as well. Diodes are not available at these wavelengths either. There are some blue diodes that are closer to 473nm, but they are an extremely recent development, and are still quite difficult to find.[/quote]
Heh, forgot to mention that 532nm is the only common green DPSS possible.

Here, do some reading on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode_pumped_solid_state_laser
http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserssl.htm#ssldps

You'll need a large and beefy 808nm infrared diode, probably well over 1000mW, you'll need to culminate this to a beam and point it through a neodymium doped yttrium orthvanadate (Nd:YVO4) crystal, which multiplies the frequency of light up to 1034nm of infrared, then you'll have to precisely align it with a Potassium titanyl phosphate (KTiOPO4) or "KTP" crystal to a tolerance of a few microns, which will double the frequency of light to  532nm, or green.

Here's some accounts of successful DPSS green builds and how they were made: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasercds.htm

For most novices this is far beyond anything you'll be capable of doing at home with no previous experience... You might want to play with making red lasers first, which are just a simple diode which needs to be culminated and focused. Of course I'm neglecting the electrical component of these, you'll also need to build a driver which produces a constant regulated current to the laser diode or it'll simply burn up.

Good luck, and welcome to the forums.