445nm laser completed

I finally put a use to one of the Kryton Grooves I had around here as a 445nm laser. The Flexdrive V5 driver is set to 760mA, and it outputs roughly 600mW using an Aixiz 405nm lens. The Kryton would get noticeably warm after some minutes being on, near the tip.

Good thing I was using goggles (those red laser enhancement goggles that people use for greens), because when I was aiming the laser into the Kenometer, it reflected off a scratch on the thermopile directly at my eye. As added precaution, I actually doubled up the goggles since I had a broken enhancement goggle, but it was still bright (not blinding, fortunately). Always wear those goggles. On the same note, having to wear goggles all the time, except for a sideways viewing of the beam makes the laser a little less "fun" than the other ones. I don't trust the reflections from walls and such to be safe.

My attempts to focus the beam using a remote webcam did not work. The laser was either too bright for the camera to render with some red filtering, or too dim when I tried using a floppy disk. It'd actually probably would have been doable if I had a focusing ring like with a Jayrob lens; I had to turn the laser on and off because I didn't want to singe my fingers.

On another note, I'm pretty happy with how this Canon S90 takes photos of the laser and its beam. The color reproduction is pretty good using the auto white-balance, and many of the 1/3rd second handheld shots came out quite clear.

Nice job!!!

Throw it on a lobster!! :crackup:

Great report. I think as people get their 445nm Class 4 lasers up and running that we'll hear more about how very dangerous that amount of light really is. Every time you turn it on, you'll be worried about what's smokin' at the end of the beam regardless of the divergence. They'll see how bright that "dot" is and know it's too bright.

That amount of laser light in a single beam is too much to have much fun with it unless it's highly controlled, as suggested in mine and Steve's safety threads. But it's GOT to be fun to see that much laser beam come out of such a small device! I hope those who experience it will go on to be a lot more cautious with all those Class 3b handheld lasers out there. Burning dangers (without focusing) generally start at Class 4, but eyesight dangers are all there at the low end of Class 3b.

GREAT looking build there.

Question: The beam diameter looks tiny. I noticed this on Mike's 445 when I saw him fire his up through a 405-G1. Is the beam so thin while going through an aixis acrylic?

Just trying to figure out if the lenses are responsible, or if the diodes have a smaller divergence coming off the dye than the BR have.

-Tyler

Nice build BB....:gj:

Jerry

nice build, BB!

Eidetic said:

..They'll see how bright that "dot" is and know it's too bright. That amount of laser light in a single beam is too much to have much fun with it unless it's highly controlled, ...

Click to expand...

..and now think again about the "bright" idea to have a 500mW blu-ray pointer.. which looks as bright as a few mW green.. uhoh..

manuel

Meatball said:

GREAT looking build there.

Question: The beam diameter looks tiny. I noticed this on Mike's 445 when I saw him fire his up through a 405-G1. Is the beam so thin while going through an aixis acrylic?

Just trying to figure out if the lenses are responsible, or if the diodes have a smaller divergence coming off the dye than the BR have.

-Tyler

Click to expand...

The divergence of the raw output is much larger than a red or violet diode with a single emitter.
The slow axis diverges about the same but the fast axis diverges much more.

The reason the beam looked so small was probably because you were viewing at an angle from the narrow side of the stripe. The beam spreads as a line, rather than a dot, so depending on where you view the beam from, it can look skinny or wide.
Here is an example showing the fast axis divergence: DSC08866 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Anyway...
Nice job on the Kryton build, Bionic_Badger. It's good to finally see more of the DIY 445s coming to life.

Verry nice !

thanks for linking, RA_pierce!
hmm, actually its obvious.. with such an aspherical beam, it is expected that the beam looks totally different, depending on how you "rotate" it. and guess how they rotate it for beamshots.. still, I didnt think about this, it was just too obvious!

manuel

Thanks for the compliments fellas!

The lens is actually pretty terrible as far as beam specs go. You can narrow it down, but it still looks like a short dash to my eyes (@ 30ft). It might just be the nature of the diode. I didn't photograph the size of the beam near the end of the beam since I didn't want to get near it (and it's hard to tell where the beam is with those goggles on.