What is more important you guys, mW or nm? Especially for melting/burning through things, which makes more of a difference. Thanks!:thanks:
It's the raw number that says how many photons it's putting out.]
Just going to nitpick that a little bit and say not necessarily.
Power is simply a measure of energy per unit time. So 1W of laser light emitted for 1 second is equal to 1 joule of energy. P=ET, E=P/T.
The wavelength of a photon is proportional to the energy of the photon (And vice versa of course). Say you have a 1W 405nm laser and a 1W 650nm laser - they'll both produce 1 Joule of light energy over 1 second, however, seeing as your 405nm photons each have more energy than your 650nm photons there will be less photons emitted at 405nm in that 1 second interval to reach 1 Joule of energy output. So a 1W 405nm laser will be putting out less photons than a 1W 650nm (Shorter wavelength, higher energy) even though the output power is equal.
Hope that makes sense!
Your other points are spot on!
405nm also typically burns a little better (All things equal, such as optics, output power, beam shape etc) because shorter wavelengths can be focused to a smaller point than longer wavelengths. So you end up with higher power density and thus things burn better.
Which is somewhat related to what you were saying with 445nm not being quite as good as 405nm for a given power due to worse beam specs - worse beam specs often causing a larger spot and as such a lower power density.
Good touch adding those videos!
+5
I just learned something new
What is more important you guys, mW or nm? Especially for melting/burning through things, which makes more of a difference. Thanks!:thanks: