- Joined
- May 15, 2012
- Messages
- 320
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- 28
I had some excess monies, so I decided to test out some ebay laser sellers. I was just assuming that I would get my money back via “item was counterfeit” cases if I had any trouble.
Thor 445nm 450nm Adjustable Military Power Blue Laser Pointer Torch Burn Match | eBay
Here’s the item. I bid $60 where it costs $69 as the buy it now price. Suspiciously cheap. The description makes the usual ridiculous claims that it should be used for presentations, by museum tour guides, and at bars. Because beer tastes better if it can blind you.
I asked the guy
So with that statement on record, I bought. It took from 29 April to 15 May to arrive, by which time the school semester had ended and I had totally forgotten about my order because I was too busy eating salads to try to lose the body weight comprised entirely of McChickens.
It was in a large bubble mailer in a white box, and that’s ok as long as it works. The assembly is a little bigger than a DL Spartan, and about twice as long as an Altoids tin. And the threads are smooth. Like reaaaally smooth. Like real ice cream, not that cheap stuff that’s all low-fat even though it’s not advertised as low-fat, but it’s got no texture and when it melts it turns into a bubbling soup of sad, but a premium ice cream like Ben and Jerry’s.
I cut the batteries out of their plastic and installed them and I had never seen a more powerful blue beam before (I’d only had 1.2w). I was amazed. It can be focused by turning the front shroud, which by the way cannot be fully unscrewed. Not science, but it looked to me like 450nm, not 445nm. The beam quality was like tiger stripes. Like dude, do you cut your own lenses? A quick measure on a Radiant x4 showed over 1400mw. Fantastic.
Then I hooked it up to an 8.3v power supply and did the meter.
The casing near where you’d expect the laser to reside gets pretty warm, so I wouldn’t run it over 1.5 minutes without 3 minutes rest. But it only consumes 1.0A.
Hold the phones, after I did the meters, I noticed a lot of hazing around the dot. I took the batteries out and inspected the lens to see what’s up. The lens was foggy and the casing did not look to me like anodized metal. Seriously? Acrylic?
I then proceeded to try and rack up some runtime to see if the lens would get hot and change in any way. And it did. The tiger stripes went away for a minute, just vanishing before my eyes. But there was still a haze.
I carefully, but not really, unscrewed the lens with a galvanized nail revealing a lens nut that looked like melty macaroni and cheese.
I gently twisted a moist q-tip on the laser diode window since I had nothing to lose, and replaced the lens with my own cheap Chinese 3 element lens with JB Weld on the threads. I would have used that "98%" lens in the picture, but it was scratched. I was using a wooden toothpick to screw the lens in until it got stiff, then I had to switch to the metal nail; It’s good to keep the pressure angle away from the glass. I focused it to infinity across my yard, and metered.
Now it’s a pretty ok laser. And 1300mw isn’t bad for $65.50
Thor 445nm 450nm Adjustable Military Power Blue Laser Pointer Torch Burn Match | eBay
Here’s the item. I bid $60 where it costs $69 as the buy it now price. Suspiciously cheap. The description makes the usual ridiculous claims that it should be used for presentations, by museum tour guides, and at bars. Because beer tastes better if it can blind you.
I asked the guy
So with that statement on record, I bought. It took from 29 April to 15 May to arrive, by which time the school semester had ended and I had totally forgotten about my order because I was too busy eating salads to try to lose the body weight comprised entirely of McChickens.
It was in a large bubble mailer in a white box, and that’s ok as long as it works. The assembly is a little bigger than a DL Spartan, and about twice as long as an Altoids tin. And the threads are smooth. Like reaaaally smooth. Like real ice cream, not that cheap stuff that’s all low-fat even though it’s not advertised as low-fat, but it’s got no texture and when it melts it turns into a bubbling soup of sad, but a premium ice cream like Ben and Jerry’s.
I cut the batteries out of their plastic and installed them and I had never seen a more powerful blue beam before (I’d only had 1.2w). I was amazed. It can be focused by turning the front shroud, which by the way cannot be fully unscrewed. Not science, but it looked to me like 450nm, not 445nm. The beam quality was like tiger stripes. Like dude, do you cut your own lenses? A quick measure on a Radiant x4 showed over 1400mw. Fantastic.
Then I hooked it up to an 8.3v power supply and did the meter.
The casing near where you’d expect the laser to reside gets pretty warm, so I wouldn’t run it over 1.5 minutes without 3 minutes rest. But it only consumes 1.0A.
Hold the phones, after I did the meters, I noticed a lot of hazing around the dot. I took the batteries out and inspected the lens to see what’s up. The lens was foggy and the casing did not look to me like anodized metal. Seriously? Acrylic?
I then proceeded to try and rack up some runtime to see if the lens would get hot and change in any way. And it did. The tiger stripes went away for a minute, just vanishing before my eyes. But there was still a haze.
I carefully, but not really, unscrewed the lens with a galvanized nail revealing a lens nut that looked like melty macaroni and cheese.
I gently twisted a moist q-tip on the laser diode window since I had nothing to lose, and replaced the lens with my own cheap Chinese 3 element lens with JB Weld on the threads. I would have used that "98%" lens in the picture, but it was scratched. I was using a wooden toothpick to screw the lens in until it got stiff, then I had to switch to the metal nail; It’s good to keep the pressure angle away from the glass. I focused it to infinity across my yard, and metered.
Now it’s a pretty ok laser. And 1300mw isn’t bad for $65.50
