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Well, in LBO's defense, there are two types.
Type one is much easier to work with and can phase match at room temperature and is not *quite* as picky when it comes to crystal temps
Type two requires the crystal to be heated to within a couple degrees for doubling to occur. This method is much more efficient but much more difficult to work with.
Most 473nm lasers any of us have played with will be type one,
(I may have gotten the one and two backwards, but you get the idea)
To expand on that, there are two types of doubling you do with LBO, critical and noncritical phase matching.
Critical phase matching is what it used in most low cost lasers, it is easier to do, and does not require high temperature or high stability. The problem is that it is not as efficient as noncritical phase matching.
Noncritical phase matching is much more efficient however it has some drawbacks. First off, for LBO, you need to heat the crystal to around 150C depending on the angle of the cut. The temperature is also very critical. A change by as much as half a degree, can change the efficiency greatly.
Depending on the laser you are looking at, it will either use noncritical or critical phase matching, it is pretty easy to detect too, just look for the large heater. Additionally, some lasers using it are doing so because the efficiency of the IR to Green conversion.
In most cavities, the main limit on power is overheating on the lasing medium, after that, it is the circulating power, which in many cases can reach hundreds of kilowatts or even megawatts.
In a simple linear cavity using a doubler, you would have two HR mirrors for the IR, the "Output coupler" is simply AR coated for green. This means that the amount of IR the doubler converts, is the amount of light that escaped the cavity. If you remove the doubler the cavity circulating power will increase and is only limited by the losses from the HR mirrors and AR coatings on the lasing medium, in other words, it is likley there will be damage caused.