I bought a open can 264,7 mw with a meredith acyrllic lens for burning from jrob. I've been very impressed with the laser and the service provided.
First off this is my first "proper" laser i have bought so I can't really compare it to anything i've owned, but that doesn't really matter. As i placed the order i decided to take an unusual approach when communicating with jay. I chose to appear as a young, poorly communicating person and see how he handles it, and handle it he did.
I wanted to do a proper review with pictures of everything but the camera battery died when i got the package so i got a few shots of the box itself but not much from the rest. When i actually started playing around with the laser, it was so much fun that this review got seriously delayed because i kept on burning things and taking pictures
well never mind that let's get this review properly started.
Intial impressions
Jay was very easy to approach even as a completely unknown person, I'd only been lurking on the forums and not actually posting anything. Jay responded quickly, precisely and clearly on all of my communications with him, he even had a decent amount of patience since i had a bunch of payment delays.
Even as i was completely clueless regarding to what i actually wanted to buy jay knew for me (the meredith lens kicks ass!) and gave good, proper and ACCURATE advice. I work for techsupport i know how rare this is with accurate advice from anywhere. Big respect points scored!
My impressions only got enforced when the package finally arrived from the US. Finally and finally it took 8 days for the box to appear delivered to the door with 0 customs hassles. They even did a evening delivery
Only seeing the cardboardbox that the lazer was in got my heart jumping. The attention to detail was perfect, not even the most inbred postalworker could've accidentally mangled that box. No sirree. When i opened the box i was even more positively suprised everything was neatly packed and the batteries where even charged.
For a hobbyist it was looking extremely professional and i liked what i saw.
The contents were all there laser, lenscap, instruction booklet, batteries and charger.I really love that lenscap. The only even remotely negative thing was that the charger had US powergrid pins on it and not european. Honestly this is the only thing i can think of and even that isn't exactly jay's fault.
The megalazer
The first time i pressed the pushbutton and heard the high pitch whine of the electric circuit and saw the beam i was impressed, and very much so. Nice solid weight, not heavy and not flimsy so it doesn't shake alot (baaad thing for a lazer to do), also it is grooved as senkat pointed out so it doesn't roll on the table. The grooves have saved my laser more then once already.
The laser is specced at 264,7 mw and 470Ma with meredith acryllic lens and a 2.7 ohm resistor. Now i really don't know what it is "supposed" to burn but this baby can cut/melt thru floppy discs, binbags, sacrificial figurines made of foam plastic and light cigarettes. you name it. At first i was miffed when i learned that the lens will "eat away" 50Mw of PÖWER!, and i was wondering how it can burn better with less power. Now i am much wiser,since this babyfocuses down to smaller then a pinprick! we even posted a vid on youtube where we light a cigarette with it. The biggest challenge was to find the right lens setting for different distances.
Altho i ordered it as as a burner i can't say that i'm disappointed in the visibilty of this beast. I played around from my balcony a bit, lighted up office buildings at night 5km away from us. The dot was very visible on a windturbine 2km away. I'll post pics and you'll see
Only thing i'm regretting is that i still do not have any protective goggles,but my regular glasses and not looking at the dot when working with has worked nicely for me. Altho i've been welding and doing other bright things before staring at a laser. Can't recommend it to anyone since this bugger is muchos muchos bright.
afterthoughts
All in all Jay has excellent service, quality product and a very nice "openness" about his builds. The service i received far outweighed any real company i've ever dealt with. 5/5 points jay! Aparently customer service isn't Dead in the US as long as it isn't outsourced to China and India
Godmonkey
PS Links and pics will be appearing shortly
Link to burning vid: .youtube.com/watch?v=2sYTH0gG5T4 (cant post direct links yet so add the www)
the vid isn't that good, i took it very soon after i got the laser and i didn't get it to focus properly then.
**EDIT** Found some new lens settings for the device, posting some pics of the carnage
First off this is my first "proper" laser i have bought so I can't really compare it to anything i've owned, but that doesn't really matter. As i placed the order i decided to take an unusual approach when communicating with jay. I chose to appear as a young, poorly communicating person and see how he handles it, and handle it he did.
I wanted to do a proper review with pictures of everything but the camera battery died when i got the package so i got a few shots of the box itself but not much from the rest. When i actually started playing around with the laser, it was so much fun that this review got seriously delayed because i kept on burning things and taking pictures
well never mind that let's get this review properly started.Intial impressions
Jay was very easy to approach even as a completely unknown person, I'd only been lurking on the forums and not actually posting anything. Jay responded quickly, precisely and clearly on all of my communications with him, he even had a decent amount of patience since i had a bunch of payment delays.
Even as i was completely clueless regarding to what i actually wanted to buy jay knew for me (the meredith lens kicks ass!) and gave good, proper and ACCURATE advice. I work for techsupport i know how rare this is with accurate advice from anywhere. Big respect points scored!
My impressions only got enforced when the package finally arrived from the US. Finally and finally it took 8 days for the box to appear delivered to the door with 0 customs hassles. They even did a evening delivery
Only seeing the cardboardbox that the lazer was in got my heart jumping. The attention to detail was perfect, not even the most inbred postalworker could've accidentally mangled that box. No sirree. When i opened the box i was even more positively suprised everything was neatly packed and the batteries where even charged.
For a hobbyist it was looking extremely professional and i liked what i saw.
The contents were all there laser, lenscap, instruction booklet, batteries and charger.I really love that lenscap. The only even remotely negative thing was that the charger had US powergrid pins on it and not european. Honestly this is the only thing i can think of and even that isn't exactly jay's fault.
The megalazer
The first time i pressed the pushbutton and heard the high pitch whine of the electric circuit and saw the beam i was impressed, and very much so. Nice solid weight, not heavy and not flimsy so it doesn't shake alot (baaad thing for a lazer to do), also it is grooved as senkat pointed out so it doesn't roll on the table. The grooves have saved my laser more then once already.
The laser is specced at 264,7 mw and 470Ma with meredith acryllic lens and a 2.7 ohm resistor. Now i really don't know what it is "supposed" to burn but this baby can cut/melt thru floppy discs, binbags, sacrificial figurines made of foam plastic and light cigarettes. you name it. At first i was miffed when i learned that the lens will "eat away" 50Mw of PÖWER!, and i was wondering how it can burn better with less power. Now i am much wiser,since this babyfocuses down to smaller then a pinprick! we even posted a vid on youtube where we light a cigarette with it. The biggest challenge was to find the right lens setting for different distances.
Altho i ordered it as as a burner i can't say that i'm disappointed in the visibilty of this beast. I played around from my balcony a bit, lighted up office buildings at night 5km away from us. The dot was very visible on a windturbine 2km away. I'll post pics and you'll see
Only thing i'm regretting is that i still do not have any protective goggles,but my regular glasses and not looking at the dot when working with has worked nicely for me. Altho i've been welding and doing other bright things before staring at a laser. Can't recommend it to anyone since this bugger is muchos muchos bright.
afterthoughts
All in all Jay has excellent service, quality product and a very nice "openness" about his builds. The service i received far outweighed any real company i've ever dealt with. 5/5 points jay! Aparently customer service isn't Dead in the US as long as it isn't outsourced to China and India
Godmonkey
PS Links and pics will be appearing shortly
Link to burning vid: .youtube.com/watch?v=2sYTH0gG5T4 (cant post direct links yet so add the www)
the vid isn't that good, i took it very soon after i got the laser and i didn't get it to focus properly then.
**EDIT** Found some new lens settings for the device, posting some pics of the carnage
