Hello.
I've been lurking here for ages. I've always like this place, but never thought I had much to contribute, so I took forever to sign up, then took about just as long to finally post something (more looking for similar experiences than sharing soemthing profound).
I don't have a very impressive collection of lasers, but I might as well list my stuff in this thread, so people can see it as an intro thread and ignore it if they are not interested:
Old pen-style 660 nm ~5mW
RadioShack 650 nm ~5 mW
Various plastic cat-toy 650 nm < 5mW
Metrologic HeNe 632.8 nm 1mW
RadioShack DPSS pen 532 nm < 5mW
Off-brand DPSS pen 532 nm ~ 5mW
Surplus pen 405 nm 10 mW rated (I believe this to be about 3-4 x overspec)
Chinese pen 405 nm 5 mW rated (Also seems very over-spec, but the host has fallen apart)
Freemascot SKY copy HL405-100B 405 nm rated at 500 mW, more like 100-200 mW
I'm also lucky enough to work in R&D, so I get to play with lasers and other nifty gadgets at work.
I'd like to build a 375 nm or shorter wavelength laser some day. I'm not great at soldering really small components, though. If a cheap driver were available for such a thing, I might make a go of it sooner.
My only attempts at builds so far haven't worked, but it's been years since I've given it a go, and I've only ever tried with IR lasers out of old broken CD players, so maybe the diodes were no good to start with, or maybe I just didn't really understand how my IR detection cards worked. Either way, I'm an absolute novice at building my own.
I've been lurking here for ages. I've always like this place, but never thought I had much to contribute, so I took forever to sign up, then took about just as long to finally post something (more looking for similar experiences than sharing soemthing profound).
I don't have a very impressive collection of lasers, but I might as well list my stuff in this thread, so people can see it as an intro thread and ignore it if they are not interested:
Old pen-style 660 nm ~5mW
RadioShack 650 nm ~5 mW
Various plastic cat-toy 650 nm < 5mW
Metrologic HeNe 632.8 nm 1mW
RadioShack DPSS pen 532 nm < 5mW
Off-brand DPSS pen 532 nm ~ 5mW
Surplus pen 405 nm 10 mW rated (I believe this to be about 3-4 x overspec)
Chinese pen 405 nm 5 mW rated (Also seems very over-spec, but the host has fallen apart)
Freemascot SKY copy HL405-100B 405 nm rated at 500 mW, more like 100-200 mW
I'm also lucky enough to work in R&D, so I get to play with lasers and other nifty gadgets at work.
I'd like to build a 375 nm or shorter wavelength laser some day. I'm not great at soldering really small components, though. If a cheap driver were available for such a thing, I might make a go of it sooner.
My only attempts at builds so far haven't worked, but it's been years since I've given it a go, and I've only ever tried with IR lasers out of old broken CD players, so maybe the diodes were no good to start with, or maybe I just didn't really understand how my IR detection cards worked. Either way, I'm an absolute novice at building my own.
