beam expander inside an olike laser?

TacoHerder said:

Im still waiting for them to respond to my email. I lost my green 5mW laser somehow. So I cant see how the beam expander does. It was my first laser so im PO'd I cant find it. Dont know if the beam expander will hold up to my 287mW 660nm, or the 500mW 405nm. Wouldnt think to even attempt my 1.3W 445nm

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I don't think the optics will work for other wavelengths. IIRC they are only coated for the one. Your 405 or 445 may actually burn the coating off the lens.

That sounds like a terrible weekend I hope it all works out for you though. :beer:

Lase

yes i was referring to the other post but its ok,,and ElectroMagneticFreak you know a great thing to hit with lasers really far away safely? water towers... there big white and usually taller than most things...and no one is in them lol use binoculars to see the dot at extreme distances

Most likely it will hold up fine to the 660nm. Good chance you will destroy the lenses with 405 or 445nm though.

I think ill just not try, better safe than sorry. They just responded. Told me to ship it back registered airmail and they will send me one at the same time. My fiance doesnt know i have this so since shes off tomorrow ill have to wait till Wednesday before i can ship it off. They asked me to tell them how much shipping cost so maybe they will pay me back for that.

glad it worked well...i assumed it would if i learned anything about o like from this forum justa pain to have to wait..

and another way to see if it has 'relatively good divergence is to hit something like building far away with multiple lasers and compare the dot size...if you have binoculars it makes it even eisier ...what i do is shine mine on the windowless part of the condos 1/2 mile away from my house and see how big the dot is..there is even a 1 foot tall square for a good point of reference for it

Last time I shipped to china it was ~$35, via EMS, tracked. That was a long time ago though.

deathstarlaser said:

yes i was referring to the other post but its ok,,and ElectroMagneticFreak you know a great thing to hit with lasers really far away safely? water towers... there big white and usually taller than most things...and no one is in them lol use binoculars to see the dot at extreme distances

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That's a good idea, there is a youtube video I think it is by Dragonlasersfanman of someone hitting the side of a water tower very long range. Unfortunately there aren't any water towers near where I live (Rainy westcoast Canada) but I can probably find something similar after I do a bit of searching around. :thanks:

Wow, worked all night. Took my fiancé to work at 9am and then went to ship this laser off. Writing down all the address info and I ran out of room. Aske for another paper an when I looked at my phone I somehow deleted my email.... WTF?!?! took me 40 min to before it decided to appear in my trash bin. SO ANNOYING! it only cost me $38 ;( my original place I goto ship stuff wanted to charge me 64, then he told me they don't get discount shipping like USPS and I'm better to goto a post office. On top of this I'm still waiting for new bank cards since some website charge my cards illegally and forced me to close accounts a few weeks ago...

Hopefully they pay me back for shipping and get my package out quick.

TacoHerder said:

Wow, worked all night. Took my fiancé to work at 9am and then went to ship this laser off. Writing down all the address info and I ran out of room. Aske for another paper an when I looked at my phone I somehow deleted my email.... WTF?!?! took me 40 min to before it decided to appear in my trash bin. SO ANNOYING! it only cost me $38 ;( my original place I goto ship stuff wanted to charge me 64, then he told me they don't get discount shipping like USPS and I'm better to goto a post office. On top of this I'm still waiting for new bank cards since some website charge my cards illegally and forced me to close accounts a few weeks ago...

Hopefully they pay me back for shipping and get my package out quick.

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Sounds like you've had a bad couple of weeks man... On top of all the things that have happened, I really hope O-like is good to you by refunding the shipping. However when this kind of thing happens they really should make up for your troubles by sending you a gift certificate or something besides just refunding shipping since it would appear the laser was not well enough protected to prepare it for the shipping journey.

In looking at past O-like reviews there was far more packaging and layers of bubble wrap surrounding the lasers. I suppose it could be because this laser comes with a holster so they think just putting it in that is enough but I would hope they aren't trying to save money now in general by not using enough bubble wrap. I would think it would be equally frustrating to them to have lasers coming back that were broken in the mail than to just simply protect them enough in the first place before they go out.

This review by Eudaimonium of the 400mW O-like crown shows how O-like has shipped things in the past well protected in a sturdy box with lots of bubblewrap. I hope this recent under packaging is just an anomaly...

http://laserpointerforums.com/f52/review-o-like-400mw-new-532nm-laser-warning-big-picz-66448.html

ya, I saw that review. Figured thats how mine would have came, but it didnt. I asked them is there a reason they didnt ship it in a box. maybe they will think twice about doing that again. And ya, my weeks just keep getting worse... At least I was able to use the charger to charge my 10440 batteries for a few days. Still waiting for my charger to come in the mail for those. You should have seen the look on the post office guys face as he was typing in all the info. Looked like he was trying to solve a riddle.

Talked to my bank today, they somehow forgot to order my new cards on the 10th... So then they told me to go online and do it. I tried when i got to work, but they ask for a card number. I need a NEW card number and card, freaking IDIOTS! So looks like ill be missing more sleep tomorrow since ill have to goto the bank.

Looks like they want to give me the run around. Susie just responded by telling me that shipping cost too much and how they told me to let them know how much shipping cost before i shipped it back. Which is not the case at all. They told me to ship it registered airmail, and to let them know how much postage was. Now she's saying I should have used normal airmail and not registered with tracking.Never did they tell me to let them know before hand. And im not going to ship it back w/o a tracking number and have them tell me it never arrived. They are 1 email away from me just telling them to pay me back for everything and forget shipping me another product.

interesting, look forward to a review on this beam expanding stuff!

TacoHerder said:

Looks like they want to give me the run around. Susie just responded by telling me that shipping cost too much and how they told me to let them know how much shipping cost before i shipped it back. Which is not the case at all. They told me to ship it registered airmail, and to let them know how much postage was. Now she's saying I should have used normal airmail and not registered with tracking.Never did they tell me to let them know before hand. And im not going to ship it back w/o a tracking number and have them tell me it never arrived. They are 1 email away from me just telling them to pay me back for everything and forget shipping me another product.

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Huh. Well. I've been down that EXACT same road with o-like before about shipping.

I ordered the 400mW torch - the old style, not the crown upgrade - but when it came I was sorely disappointed. There was a problem with the tail cap clickie, but even when it worked, or I bypassed it, it was extremely unstable, and barely brighter than the 100mW laser I had, and then it died.

I originally paid for it to be shipped EMS - so already spent a bit more on shipping. Now I had to ship the laser back.

There was no way in hell I was going to ship it without tracking, considering it was over $200.

IIRC shipping was $35, and that's exactly what I told Susie. Was also told there must be a cheaper option, and I know for a fact there isn't one. I checked everything. Cheapest tracked option was via USPS, EMS.

So I shipped the laser back out to them. Three days after I got it.

I was preoccupied with work, and other stuff, so kind of forgot about it, but two weeks later came back, and tracked it. It showed as delivered.

I contacted Susie, asking when they would ship the replacement back. I was told they didn't get it yet! So I waited another week for the status to change. Checked with her AGAIN. Again she says they don't have it.

Went to post office, to make sure I wasn't going crazy, and had them check the tracking. They also confirmed it was delivered, and that at that time it had been delivered for over two weeks

At that point, sent them pictures of the post office receipt and shipping label, with the exact address they specified, and a screenshot of the status. Threatened a dispute via credit card if they didn't provide me with either a refund or a tracking number for my replacement within 2 business days.

SAME DAY I get an email saying ok, we ship replacement, don't worry, and your laser arrived... :thinking:

About two weeks later I had the laser, and it worked perfectly. It's actually still in my collection, and it consistently hits over 500mW peaks, with very little IR.

The way the conversation was headed before I sent over picture proof of shipping (I sent tracking number to them prior to that) I really feel that if I had not tracked the package, I would have been screwed out of ~$240.

From start to finish, for me to get a working laser, it took over 2 months.

Needless to say the experience left me feeling kind of sour.

Moral of the story... unless you're a gambler, and can afford to take a hit... always ship tracked, and insured.

@Infinitus,

When will these laser companies realize they will actually make more money if they offer good business practices rather than trying to save money by trying to claim the laser never showed up when it did...

Do they not realize how many people are here reading on LPF and what they are doing to their reputation! :tsk:

@Tacoherder,

Maybe if you mention you are from LPF and that you have spoken to Infinitus about how O-like had claimed they never received his faulty laser when they had in fact received it, it will prove why you needed to pay for tracking and thus they have to refund you the full amount for it to be tracked so you could prove that it had arrived.

Yeah, O-like gets a lot of referrals from this forum. It only takes one bad incident like this to sow doubt in the minds of customers, or even cause people to warn others about buying from them--causing their sales to plummet. DealExtreme's good customer service is why I've bought so much stuff from them despite their shipping (or rather the sourcing/packaging) being really slow. DinoDirect, to their credit, also provided good customer service in the end, even if it ended up being a paid trying to get some problem rectified.