Green Lasers - Inherently Unreliable???

I need to vent.

Every 5 mW green laser I buy is a lemon.

I'm not buying cheap eBay lasers. Instead, I am purchasing from supposedly higher-quality suppliers like Laserglow Technologies and Optotronics. I use fresh alkaline batteries, and I am not overheating them by excessive continuous use. Nonetheless, every green laser is a disappointment right from the moment I first take it out of the shipping box.

Frequently, these lasers will not emit any light at all when the switch is first depressed. After repeatedly clicking and holding the switch multiple times, they will finally wake up, but then they'll only emit an EXTREMELY feeble beam. This feeble beam can persist for a long time before it finally brightens to even a minimally useful level, yet still far below what it should be doing. My Laserglow is particularly bad about this.

Even for the "best" green laser I've tried, on an unusually good day, it never comes on at anywhere near its full power. I wouldn't mind at all if it took two or three seconds to stabilize and reach full power, but I always get delays many, many times longer than that. I always have to fiddle with a green laser for one to three minutes before it finally brightens to its proper intensity.

Green lasers appear brighter because the eye is more sensitive to green, but this advantage is completely ruined and negated when it takes at least a minute before the laser develops reasonable power. Before that happens, a cheap office-supply-store red laser will outperform it. By the time the green laser finally starts behaving, the moment has long passed for the job I was needing it to do. That makes it useless.

So why are green lasers so popular? I have lost confidence in finding one that will reliably reach full power within a couple seconds of turning it on at ordinary room temperature. I need something that I can feel confident will work fairly promptly after I first take it out of my pocket. So, after getting nothing but lemons from supposedly higher-quality sources, I have to say a permanent goodbye to the 5mW green laser.

Thanks for the opportunity to vent.

You've been unlucky is all I'd say. I have several green lasers, the pen types are the least stable but not as bad as you've had. My 100mW "portable" laser is like the size of a small torch and is very stable and has no power problems. Green lasers perform better in bigger hosts because they're better heatsinked. You can now get diode lasers in the green spectrum which are instant on and very stable, but may have worse beam characteristics. When I was new to the hobby the diode greens hadn't really gained popularity yet.

^Agreed. Seems like you have a stroke of bad luck. All my DPSS pointers have no problem being stable no matter the weather. My 532nm Anser acts just like my diode pens, never had a flicker from that thing.

A few things you can try:
-Put fresh batteries
-Try different temperatures. Some DPSS lasers like it warm, while others like it cold.
-The Ansers duty cycle is listed as 90Sec so don't push it past that or else it could damage your laser.

Hope it helped! I'll look over this thread to see if I can chime in anymore. If you want to see my Anser I'll gladly take a video for yah.

-Alex

I would recommend you to buy lasers from the links linked here.

Find this all very strange especially when you could buy a bunch of $5 532nm and they would likely work better than what you are describing.
Don't give up and if you really want a green get a 520nm.

emoryk said:

Frequently, these lasers will not emit any light at all when the switch is first depressed. After repeatedly clicking and holding the switch multiple times, they will finally wake up, but then they'll only emit an EXTREMELY feeble beam. This feeble beam can persist for a long time before it finally brightens to even a minimally useful level, yet still far below what it should be doing. My Laserglow is particularly bad about this.

Click to expand...

That sounds like my 350mW Hulk from Dragon Lasers.
It needs 2 seconds after turning it on, to emit light. After that it needs about another 10 seconds to warm up and get to maximum power.

But this all shouldn't be the case for your 5mW laser, that you want to use, as a replacement of a red one.

If you really tried different pointers as you said then you are probably just very unlucky.

I had my first green laser, which was also a low power pen like yours, about 10 years ago.
It NEVER had any of the problems you described, at that time.

I've tried for years to get a decent, budget greenie to mount in my DJ projectors to compliment my reds and blues. Just something in the couple hundred mW range and mounted in a decent heatsink.

Tried several of the vendors listed here...no dice...get maybea dozen or so hours out of them and they give up the ghost. Same for pointers. don't use them much, but the more pricey ones I've bought don't last long.

With the Exception:

I have a 30-40mW greenie I bought for $19 off of Ebay like 6-7 years ago, and have beat the crap out of. All the black paint has been wore off the case leaving a pretty brass finish. I can't kill this thing. I also found a working greenie in a surplus no name Chinese projector I found in a junk pile that was listed on the outside on the module as '30mW'. After mounting it to another power supply I'm guestimating it's over 200mW visually. Frikken thing has a over a hundred hours on it and refuses to die.

As far as I'm concerned price does equal quality when it comes to greenies until you get into to true lab built spec'd modules.

First few 532nm's i got I thought they were terrible and unreliable. Till i found out there sensitive temperment. Try leavimg it your pocket fo a few mins. Most of the ones ive had love to be warm. Pew pew. Right outta the pocket. Good luck and keep trying

Pew pew.... love it.

I've only had the problem of running my small pen lasers too long to where they overheat and die, never a low output problem. The most rugged, on average, 532nm greenie I've had so far are cheap 7 to 8 dollar (including shipping) lasers from China, I can't kill these things.

The little pen ones I've had that run on alkali cells are rubbish, very unstable and I'm convinced lacking in any proper diode driver. I have a couple of cheap 301 and 303s from China though and they won't die despite some duty cycle abuse, just keep on going and going. I suspect that's because they have decent drivers and are nicely heatsinked to the hosts.

If all of them are taking some time to fire up properly I'll bet you live in a very cold place. This is bad for DPSS lasers. Since you're already spending a considerable amount for a 5mW, you should consider a diode green (515 or 520nm).

Either that or buy some ebay pens for $3 and hope you're lucky

These seem to be good. Can anyone else
confirm this?

http://laserpointerforums.com/f52/gearbest-yx-016-5mw-532nm-starry-sky-green-laser-pointer-91935.html

buy a 520 instead, the color is much nicer looking and its diode so it will be more stable and dont need heatup even in cold conditions, 532 is so dull now.. it was cool 5 years ago.

Yes lighting stalker I actually ordered one of these after your review. I am actually in the process of getting an LPM to see what its putting out. Very bright though. Only problem ive had was that the lens is pretty recessed on both side. I went to clean the lens and only made it worse, for I cant get down in there too well. So it sits with a dirty lens. Maybe ill drill the lens out hehe :horse: !

Haha, I made the exact same mistake! Most
of the time the lens isn't dirty, but there
are reflections inside the shiny brass
barrel. I found a supplier of good AR
coated lenses and now it's putting out over
90mW of combined green/IR. Lessons learned
the hard way :beer: