Gone for a while...Wicked Lasers are cheap?

I've been gone for a while. When I left, the cool thing to have was a 405nm laser with a diode from the HD-DVD players. When I left, Wicked Lasers were also incredibly more expensive than they are now. Can someone fill me in on all of this, and what's going on with these 445nm lasers that I'm seeing?

Welcome back!
Last summer, people got wise to the fact that c@s1o had released a line of video projectors
that use 24 (!) 445nm 1000mW 5.6mm diodes!
The diodes are used both for their blue light, and with help of a phosphor thinggy, the green light as well.
So, many projectors were (and still are being) torn apart just to get those diodes, as they
make A LOT (outputs of almost 2W have been measured) of blue light for a relatively
cheap price.
They are awesome short range burners too, as you can imagine.
Short range, because the divergence is really terrible. Emission is a bunch of bars
instead a nice round spot, and to top it off one axis diverges much faster than the other.
In my signature there's a blue link to a video of the output without a lens at several levels of current.

Wicked Lasers was the first to commercially offer a handheld based on that diode, everybody
ordered one, they couldn't keep up with the orders, and today we have people finally
receiving them, some 7 months after they were ordered.

Also, lasers in general have dropped in price heavily over the last year.
The current cutting edge of 405nm comes from 12x burners and you get as much as 800mW out of them!

Also, because of videos of these monster handhelds on youtube,
almost every day we get "WOW! where can I get a 1W blue lazor now!"-threads from total
laser-noobs with NO experience with lasers at all.

also the 405nm lasers are really kicking ass now. we have blu ray burners with 12x sleds where the laser can reach up to 700mw with good beam characteristics.

michael.

anselm said:

Welcome back!
Last summer, people got wise to the fact that c@s1o had released a line of video projectors
that use 24 (!) 445nm 1000mW 5.6mm diodes!
The diodes are used both for their blue light, and with help of a phosphor thinggy, the green light as well.
So, many projectors were (and still are being) torn apart just to get those diodes, as they
make A LOT (outputs of almost 2W have been measured) of blue light for a relatively
cheap price.
They are awesome short range burners too, as you can imagine.
Short range, because the divergence is really terrible. Emission is a bunch of bars
instead a nice round spot, and to top it off one axis diverges much faster than the other.
In my signature there's a blue link to a video of the output without a lens at several levels of current.

Wicked Lasers was the first to commercially offer a handheld based on that diode, everybody
ordered one, they couldn't keep up with the orders, and today we have people finally
receiving them, some 7 months after they were ordered.

Also, lasers in general have dropped in price heavily over the last year.
The current cutting edge of 405nm comes from 12x burners and you get as much as 800mW out of them!

Also, because of videos of these monster handhelds on youtube,
almost every day we get "WOW! where can I get a 1W blue lazor now!"-threads from total
laser-noobs with NO experience with lasers at all.

Click to expand...

chipdouglas said:

also the 405nm lasers are really kicking ass now. we have blu ray burners with 12x sleds where the laser can reach up to 700mw with good beam characteristics.

michael.

Click to expand...

Lol Anselm Had it all covered already.

:banghead:



@360freak Did you know we got 12X's in 405 nm Now? That can do 700-800mW when pushed..... Oh and it has good beam specs... Bet you didn't know That!!!

I did not know that! Wow. So are you saying that the 445nm diodes aren't good for much other than short range burning since they have awful divergence?

Oh no, they make for great photography and for gorgeous lightsabers across the night sky!
The wavelength also charges glow in the dark material and makes stuff fluoresce not unlike 405nm.
It's a real, cheap, blue laser.

Also the projector crowd is happy and they have replaced their RGV with RGB.
Now red is the most expensive color, there hasn't been much evolution since the mitsubishi
long open can reds ~250mw.

They really are a double edged sword though, because now every idiot with 200 dollars can
poke around with a class IV handheld.

yep, betcha didnt know after reading all that.... well nevermind

I have a 1.9W 445
an 820mW 405 (405-g-1 lens)

and they were both relatively cheap. If you do it good and right, and DIY, you can get almost 2W for under $200

$200?

Every idiot with $100 can do it

Idiot's don't build lasers, they buy 'em.
So they get to pay 200$.

I like the "more expensive" builds, I'm not too partial to hotlights hosts, or anything like that, every host I've had, has cost $50 for host plus HS, then dual drivers, or big batterys, but I am working on a guidesman budget build, just need the actual guidesman hahaha, and my total cost so far has been under $100 cause I had the battery already

Funnily enough, I've never owned any more than a PHR in the 405 wavelength! The only 405nm lasers I've had was a 5mW PS3 diode I got a few weeks after they were discovered in PS3's, and a few PHR's which all died. These 445nm diodes are beasts compared to 405!

Those are the "Arctics" WL is offering.

Oohh and Aahh, now:







That was aproximately 1W beamz.

Here is some 600mW beam. 405nm one:




Ahhh... that felt good