Sickening... we need someone to take action

Razako said:

This is so stupid lol. I mean there's already $30 200mw red lasers floating around and nothing has happened with them. The WL arctic probably only puts out around 500-700mw so it's really not all that much worse than existing lasers. Most incidents come from the cheapo newwish dx 532 nm lasers anyway.

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Yep. It is just the marketing hype that is driving these concerns. We've been building 600mW violets for awhile now. 700mW of blue is not that much more dangerous.

The difference is that we have not run a marketing blitz or dumped many, many units onto the public. Plus these new blues are less expensive so more people can/will afford them. (chicken vs. egg?)

Peace,
dave

The interesting thing to me, is that so far, none of these lasers have gone public. A bunch of orders have been taken, but I'm really wondering how this will pan out.

As it stands right now, the only people who have high powered 445s are hobbyists who have built them. Folks from here, PL, maybe a few other places.

Customs confiscations? Maybe. But if they have accession numbers, at least in the US, would customs have any grounds to confiscate them?

Or will this be a matter of "how fast can congress pass a law" ? Or could the FDA just change things up without those gyrations?

Crazy Jay said:

All in your head Cmak

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hahaha not sure if he actually noticed the animation...

Oh and Dave/bobhaha, I can't thank you guys enough for the idea!

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Ohh and cmak your welcome!

A few thoughts: WL made these units and marketed them as weapons, they revealed the source of the diodes, and posted scary adds all over the net. Curious about revealing the source of the laser diodes... Why would they do this when they know a $700 projector has 24 of the diodes inside?

My only guess is that they are TRYING to get the projectors that have the diodes inside banned or modified tamper resistant, having already bought a lot of units for their own use and sale. I have seen this tactic used on ebay by rival sellers against each other. It always has the same ending- open mouth,insert foot.

heruursciences said:

My only guess is that they are TRYING to get the projectors that have the diodes inside banned or modified tamper resistant, having already bought a lot of units for their own use and sale. I have seen this tactic used on ebay by rival sellers against each other. It always has the same ending- open mouth,insert foot.

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Possible that they've bought enough for 3000+ lasers? I suppose; that also could be why they're adding the restrictions now to make it harder to buy.

Maybe once they hit a sweet spot as far as sales go, they're intentionally slowing purchases down.

I wonder where Nova/Laserglow is sourcing them -- though unlike WL, Nova does say 6-8 weeks out, and that's a while.

Have we verified, absolutely, that these projectors have been discontinued? If they have been, I bet that's what's going on -- a redesign to make the diodes harder or impossible to extract.

aryntha said:

a redesign to make the diodes harder or impossible to extract.

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Uhm, if they had that intention, it was easy to do ..... just soldering all the diodes in a "grid of holes" on a brass plate with some indium alloy ..... not enough heat for damage the diodes, if made with a single pass with machines, but when you try to desolder them from the grid, the too much heat can kill half of them or more .....

Not sure about resins, there are lots of solvents that are able to slowly melt also the bicomponent resins without kill the lasers .....

Other than this, probably that move can be a self-hit-their-ba**s move, if they plan to repair the units ..... and also, they are not stupids, they KNOW that some of their sells are due to this specific use, and knows that, doing this, the number of sold units can decrease, and that the laser community also can do them very bad ads in the market and specialized ambients, for "revenge" ..... and i don't think a company would intentionally increase their own costs and lower their gains and sales ..... at least, i don't know companies that do this intentionally

Well, true but, I highly doubt they anticipated this and it could be a liability issue for them. If a redesign to make the diodes harder to get out is a CYA sort of thing, I can see it happening.

Time will tell...

daguin said:

Yep. It is just the marketing hype that is driving these concerns. We've been building 600mW violets for awhile now. 700mW of blue is not that much more dangerous.

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I'd even say that a 700 mW 445 is in practical handling, less dangerous than a 600 mW bluray. The potential for damage rises with power, but 445 looks a heck of a lot brighter, which could encourage people to stay out of the danger zone.

I think the most dangerous products in practice are those with high power but little visibility... like 808 nm burners with considerable power. The only thing that prevents those from doing much damage is that they are so near-invisible they don't get any popularity with the public at large.

A $200 handheld weapon to permanently blind my enemies from over 200yards away? LoL sign me up!

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Quote from someone of some other forum..

A $200 handheld weapon to permanently blind my enemies from over 200yards away? LoL sign me up!

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Buckshot.. shotgun.. should be fairly effective and under $200 ;p

Better get killed rather than lose your vision.

This is a premiere product launch, from what i heard, they intentionally made them easy to extract the diodes. This was not for people building pointers, but for failure mode analysis and lower cost partial repairs or refurbishment of the laser module.

The good news is they aren't going to recall any of them they sold, but they will continue to sell the ones with easy to take out diodes until they are gone, but the back-ordered units may be replaced with an epoxied together module assembly with press fit diodes that need a carbide tipped press tool to remove them without damage.

heruursciences said:

The good news is they aren't going to recall any of them they sold, but they will continue to sell the ones with easy to take out diodes until they are gone, but the back-ordered units may be replaced with an epoxied together module assembly with press fit diodes that need a carbide tipped press tool to remove them without damage.

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Is this speculation or do you have sources? Even if they were to do this, it wouldn't be impossible to cover the windows, chemically treat the epoxy, then cut and snap away the heatsinks for a maybe 80% yield of diodes.

aryntha said:

Possible that they've bought enough for 3000+ lasers? I suppose; that also could be why they're adding the restrictions now to make it harder to buy. ..The order number increase at WL reflects ALL orders, not just the 445nm. IIRC

Maybe once they hit a sweet spot as far as sales go, they're intentionally slowing purchases down.

I wonder where Nova/Laserglow is sourcing them -- though unlike WL, Nova does say 6-8 weeks out, and that's a while.
ATM the Casio Projector is the ONLY source of THIS particular diode.( from AixiZ)

Have we verified, absolutely, that these projectors have been discontinued? If they have been, I bet that's what's going on -- a redesign to make the diodes harder or impossible to extract.

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The outfit that sent me my projector had them as 'item no longer available' (130 model) about one week after I ordered it.

AixiZ tells me that they were unable to obtain ANY replacement arrays. I have no doubt that AixiZ has excellant sources in China.,,,my 2 cents---hak

As with any tech this will blow over in a week or two, and be old hat.

Gotta give it too wicked, they sure know how to advertise. Shame it's at our expense.

I think the biggest issue is the marketing. A very public marketing campaign for a company already on the FDA watch list will see the seizure of many of these. The FDA will be all ears for a commercially available class 4 laser pointer with absolutely no required safety systems for class 4 operation. Yes, there are other available class 4 hand held systems and pointers but these are sold more as underground products. They are labeled and shipped using accession numbers for class 3b systems. Anyone who owns one of those 500mW 532nm portables systems please post the accession number if I am wrong (I'm not). It is on the FDA2877 form that's included with the customs documents.

There is no federal law banning the ownership of class 4 lasers. There are local laws however that do restrict laser ownership. Be wary of those. The 445nm diodes are a leap beyond the laser technology commonly available to the casual operator. The casual operator will be the impetus for more and more local restriction. It will happen. Of course, those in the hobby end up getting it in the rear. As long as headlines keep getting posted the government will keep prying. The price of these units puts them in more hands with less education than ever before. There is a strong potential this may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Imagine the output power in six months or one year. Ok, stop drooling but imagine that power in the hands of someone who buys it because they've always thought it might be neat to buy a laser. The volume of burning videos with these inexpensive units will go through the roof. I think the issue will snowball.