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Very cool, Bob! Can't wait to see what you come up with. :D Adam

True. However, the video seemed to be focused (pardon the pun) on destroying things. If your goal is to cause damage you can do a lot more with a pulsed laser vs CW at the same average output. Adam

Sorry to hear that you cracked your IR filter! :cry: If you decide to try it again you may want to expand the beam diameter before it strikes the filter to spread the power out and prevent a localized hot-spot. One advantage of using a prism vs an IR filter is that the prism is merely...

Gotta admire the work he did on the up-collimator (telescope). But if he was surprised at the performance of that CW fiber laser he should have grabbed an old-school Q-switched Laserscope (Z-fold resonator) and simply removed the KTP instead. The peak IR pulse power in those units easily...

There was a discussion on PhotonLexicon back in 2006 about producing a custom "axicon" optic that might be helpful to your build. (Despite the fact that there are axicon lenses, that's not what this was about.) The idea was to start with a rod with a conical tip and then grind 4 (or more)...

What a beast! Haven't seen one of the CNI units with the large external driver like that in quite a while... If you're curious about stray IR in the output, you could always send the beam through a prism and then check the power output right after the beam exits the prism and again at a...

Hmmmm... Drill press + slide vise as a surrogate for a lathe? Now that's what I call adaptation! :) I've actually considered buying a mini-mill a few times in the past, but I've always decided against it at the last minute. To be fair I probably don't have the time to learn everything I...

Good point Len. Although based on the discussion above it seems likely that pupper42 may have fried his diode. :cry: If it was lasing he should have seen *something*... One easy way to tell if a 405 nm laser diode is, in fact, lasing is to aim the spot onto a sheet of notebook paper. Nearly...

Nice work, Cowboy! Clearly you have your own mill. That certainly helps when building custom units like these. Although I have to admit that the very large head assembly shown in your pictures is a bit at odds with the whole "handheld" motif! :) It makes the pointer look like a mace! But...

I've been into RC off and on ever since the late 1970's. Started with planes (glow fuel) when I was very young and never got very good. Sold everything when I got into High School. Jumped into 1/10th scale off-road cars in the mid 1980's (Ni-Cd) and had a ton of fun. Started racing with a...

A beam-expander in one dimension only, yes. This would be positioned after the primary collimating lens. :) To further clarify... Most high-power multi-mode diodes have a profoundly rectangular beam where one axis (the "fast" axis) diverges at a much greater rate than the other...

Ahhh, no - not quite. :) Lasorb is not the same as a soft start. Lasorb is designed to protect against static shocks. It does not trigger based on current, or on voltage for that matter. Rather, it triggers based on how fast the applied voltage is changing. But the rise time of the...

Hmmm - 3S lipo with XT60 connector... I'm guessing a 250 series quad-copter? :) Adam

Interesting to see this old thread come back to life after 6 months! :) Steve, I agree 100% with your comments about previously-bullet-proof drivers suddenly experiencing a round of failures. In my case it was due to the manufacturer substituting the wrong current-sensing resistor on the...

Wow, a 2 inch diameter heat sink does seem rather excessive! Bet it makes for a heavy unit too! I agree that there is a point where just adding more thermal mass to the heat sink ends up being counterproductive, but in this case the diode is never operating long enough to saturate the heat...

I decided to go with the G2 lens, as it should give the best performance for close-focus applications. Since I wouldn't have any fast axis correction I knew the beam quality in the far field would always be poor, so I figured my best option would be to optimize the near-field performance...

Thanks for the compliments! I agree that the host looks fantastic. Can't say enough good things about Rich's work. (Lifetime17 here on the forum) He had quite a few designs that caught my eye, but I finally settled on this one. It's got considerable heft to it, due to the large heatsink...

So, yeah, I know it's irresponsible (some would say reckless) to build a hand-held laser with this sort of output power, but it was something I've always wanted to try. Huge thanks to Rich (Lifetime17) for his assistance with the custom-machined host. He had to do a good bit of extra machining...

This thread appears to be dead at the moment (since the last post I see was back in May) but at the risk of being accused to be "far too late to the party", I feel I should throw my $.02 into this discussion, since it's pretty clear that there is some disinformation being spread. Crow's driver...