Recent content by maxh

Gasoline has a flash point of -40C, significantly lower than acetone's -20C. Filled up your car or a hot lawnmower recently? It seems that 98% of people confuse flash point with autoignition temperature. Flash point is the temperature at which a volatile liquid can produce a flammable air...

Oooohhhh, I gotcha. Airplanes and dumasses.

The visibility of a color has nothing to do with how much damage it can do. Only the power, and how well the substrate on which it is being shined absorb at that wavelength matter. 5mW was chosen as the safe limit because they decided that that was the maximum power at which the eye could...

Don't forget 445 with its lower wavelength will have more Rayleigh scattering, helping improve its beam visibility. Whether it's enough to overcome the increased brightness of 473 due to the extra stimulation of the green receptors in the eye, I don't know.

The "Help, Suggestions, & Administrative Announcements" forum is also all locked up except for one thread.

445 is better, anyways, as it's closer to the eye's peak blue detection. 473 only looks brighter to the eye because it also stimulates the greens. You can get the same effect and color by simply turning the green up a tiny bit in your scanner, and then your "473 color blue" will be even brighter...

I just poked my head in here after a few months of being away, and am blown away by the 445nm revolution! Unfortunately it looks like I've missed all of the group buys. Does anyone have a diode or two they'd be willing to sell me? I am a responsible laserist...

Can you post this newer circuit here?

As an addendum to my last PM, is there any preferred method for opening the case? I have 2 screws on the bottom which appear to secure the thermopile, so either it snaps together really tightly or there's screws hiding under the rubber feet?

It still works just fine. I don't think I did any permanent damage. I wouldn't've done it but Ken said it could take up to 18V.

Yeah, I plugged in my 19V laptop AC adapter because it had the right plug and I didn't have any other wall warts and it would work for about 30 seconds before the heat would drive the display crazy.

It looks like you're trying to use one lens to collimate multiple laser diodes clustered together. This won't work. The light coming from one diode is fanning out and in order to collimate it, you must position the diode so that the point from which the rays emanate (the tip of the V) is at the...

I've considered building a little titanium laser just because titanium's cool. Titanium is quite strong, but it's not that hard, so it actually isn't very scratch resistant. Its poor thermal conductivity would make it good for a spork, though, because it wouldn't burn your tongue as fast when...

Ken, any idea when my Kenolite might ship?

Here's a way to think about polarization that isn't necessarily accurate, but results in a mental model that works for most uses. Picture a photon traveling towards a window with venetian blinds. Now remember its wave nature and how as it's traveling towards the window in a straight line, it's...