Hello fellow laser enthusiasts!

Hey everyone!

My name is Paul, and I've been lurking this site for a while now. I finally made an account, and since there is a "welcome" board I figured I would go ahead and post my Hello World thread.

I'm still reading through all the stickies and sections here, impressively large/active forum for what I never knew was such a big hobby. (I'm not the only guy who thinks lasers are cool!?)

I've been a bit of a prepper and flashlight fanatic my whole life, and lasers are just cool as heck.

I haven't owned a laser in some years now, as college kinda took the life (time) out of all my old hobbies. So I went ahead and ordered a couple of those ubiquitous Chineseum 301 lasers and some safety McGlarses for the appropriate wavelengths. (Any AvE fans here??)

Got the el cheapos coming in the mail this week just to tide me over before doing a build. I have too many expensive hobbies, but there is always room for more!

I'm sure you'll be hearing back from me with pictures and inevitably questions soon enough. But for now, there's my introduction.

Cheers,
-Paul

Welcome, I think i'm just about the only one who didn't start with flashlight's.
This place sure surprised me also

Welcome to the LPF. Very nice intro. Rep+
And no, you are not only guy thinking lasers are cool. And make sure you have special fund for this hobby as there is so much stuff to acquire - lasers, optics, batts, various accessories etc. And I like to say - you may never have enough lasers. It is always good to have a nice rainbow collection and coherent monochromatic light (or EM radiation to be more accurate) is something completely different from flashlight light. It opens you a wide world of experiments and uses and you might be limited just by your imagination (and sometimes physics laws).
Make sure you have appropriate safety gear and knowledge - a lot might be found here. Enjoy this awesome forums and community.

Edit: GSS - no you are not, I'm laser guy from day no. 1, no flashlight starts. Although I have a very nice 1700 lumen, cold led headlamp with wide angle and size of about box of matches. I use it for my night bike rides in the forest and for laserpainting scene preparation and safety checks (I can see animal eyes about 400 - 500 m far with that, enough to make sure no wildlife is in NOHD of my lasers).

Welcome to the Forum Paul. Well, lasers makes another expensive hobby for your list.
Yep, lasers are infact a larger hobby than you would think.
GSS, I too didn't start with flashlights. Coherent thoughts from the start.

Figure's also that all my builds are just about modded flashlight host's but don't have one thats still a "flashlight":thinking:

I only have one that is a modded flashlight myself and that's my 3.5W 445nm by Rick Trent.

Welcome, very nice intro, will be looking forward to reading your posts. Enjoy and be safe.

I did start with flashlights. Got a nice collection of them. Got a nice collection of batteries also they seem just to grow and grow. ( thinking there might be something going on when I'm not looking ) .

BobMc said:

...

( thinking there might be something going on when I'm not looking ) .

Click to expand...

Lol, seems my battery collection are only males or only females so far.

Thanks for the warm welcome all. I'm not sure if it's entirely kosher to post a link here to my second thread, but I've posted a second thread! Geeks' Board, first legitimate post here.

I'm not completely familiar with the image formatting that everyone uses here. I uploaded compressed size imaged to imgur and then linked them in my post. They look very large on my laptop, any comments about how to include photos in a post and have it look nice? It's nice to have decent resolution but it's also nice to be able to fit a whole image on the screen

It's your thread here, therefore completely legit to link your project. Thanks for sharing!

YupHio said:

Thanks for the warm welcome all. I'm not sure if it's entirely kosher to post a link here to my second thread, but I've posted a second thread! Geeks' Board, first legitimate post here.

I'm not completely familiar with the image formatting that everyone uses here. I uploaded compressed size imaged to imgur and then linked them in my post. They look very large on my laptop, any comments about how to include photos in a post and have it look nice? It's nice to have decent resolution but it's also nice to be able to fit a whole image on the screen

Click to expand...

Size looks fine on my monitor, although it is fairly large. I just edit them on Imgur after I upload, they have a resize option, I then link the resized images.

Welcome and enjoy, there's a lot of good reading here.

Plenty of sckookum lasers to be had that make the magic pixie come out. Just don't let the smoke out. Welcome.

:wave:Welcome to the Forum Paul...
Looks like you are starting out just fine
by reading...

Enjoy your stay.

Jerry

Hi

-Alex

Nice intro. Paul, welcome to LPF! :beer:
Have fun, be safe, and enjoy your stay here!:yh: