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FYI all, polarized laser beams are very efficiently reflected or refracted at transparent optical window surfaces depending on the polarization angle of incidence. See here: Brewster's angle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia If you have a laser with a polarized output it is relatively easy to...

Just reading this thread and came across your comment. Since the diode output is polarized, you would be able to employ a transparent "window" optic properly oriented in the beam of your 520 at/near Brewster's angle, changing the angle of incidence or rotating the laser on axis until you get a...

There is a simple explanation for this effect based on perspective illusion. Here's an example: Stand in front of a wall in a large room, say the living room of your house. Look up to where the wall meets the ceiling, then to one corner. Now move your eyes smoothly along the line from one...

I chose 460 as a nice "mid" blue. 450 is more "cobalt" blue, and 470 begins to me to have just a bit of cyan added, but still a nice color. Of course, ALL visible single-spectral-line colors look good to me!:pop: 2c, T.

I chose 520nm. Ar-ion 514.5nm looks just a tad on the "bluer" side to me, while 532nm is very definitely a tad on the yellow, lime/grass green to my eyes. 2c, T.

Nope. As far as I am concerned, silver is king when it comes to handhelds (especially of high output). And it's a heckuva lot more affordable! Gold inlays would be fine though.;):D T.

I just have two comments: That's just freakin' awesome!!, and When's the group buy? :D T.;)

I disagree entirely with any form of licensing or otherwise asking the government if/whether or not we can own and use lasers.:banned: Licensing is a foot in the door and there is no way to know "how much of the beast will allow itself into the room" in order to be comfortable. License fees can...

I'm always in for more power in a smaller package. :beer: Don't know when/if it will hit the streets though. Snip: "...The new ionically-conductive cathode enabled the ORNL battery to maintain a capacity of 1200 milliamp-hours (mAh) per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60 degrees...

This is indeed the "Age of the Laser". Now you can get a whole assortment of colors for what my first 4mW red HeNe cost back around 1976. BUT... back then the few laserists of the day and the people that made the things called "galvos" and other then-"secret" toys that turned laser beams into...

All that I meant by "tweaking" was that you would have to be careful/precise in the exact placement/positioning of an optic like that so as to get the result you want. Technically, what you need is a precision prism with eight triangular faces meeting at a point, with a flat bottom. Good luck...

An octagonal or ball shaped beveled bead or crystal such as the ones that hang in windows might work for that with the right orientation? Might need some tweaking to get eight even rays. Octagon Hanging Window Crystal - YouTube T.

^ Apparently...YES. :D rdyno, about what size spot are you looking to achieve at (X) km? Very likely the smaller the spot desired at distance, the larger the diameter of collimated beam required, and with correspondingly larger optics. T.

Most lasers are set up so that the beam 'waist' (point of minimum divergence) occurs at or near the output window. The larger the beam diameter at the waist, the smaller the dot will be at a given distance for a given divergence value. To get the smallest spot at the greatest distance you may...

I like this! Would/could it be a candidate for a group buy?:whistle: T.

Mostly I just appreciate the beauty and behavior of beams of coherent color light interacting/reflecting/refracting with/from/through just about anything. Whether I can burn, melt or light anything with a laser is of distant secondary importance. T.

I'm thinking at least some fraction of LEOs in a laser-targeted helicopter are less concerned about the nuisance light as they are that the laser might be attached to a rifle, especially in more rural or less-populated areas. Either way I can understand how badly they would want to make an...

I wonder how many of these people are "copycats" that see/read articles like that and think "I can get away with it." An IMPORTANT THING to remember from the story at the link that Moh posted is that the perp used a laser BORROWED FROM A FRIEND. Choose your friends VERY carefully... better to...

Wouldn't gold-coated mirrors be required for CO2, with ZnSe lenses at the eyepiece-turned-output-lens? $$$$ ... Even if you were to run the light from all those 445nm diodes through the telescope, would you not end up with a set of diverging beams at the eyepiece? T.

Typically in the USA if a federal law were to go into effect re lasers, the lasers already in the hands of the public would be "grandfathered", as the Constitution forbids the passage of ex post facto law. But the very fact that we are discussing the topic suggests to me that I should try to...