If you haven't stopped by Susies site lately, take a gander - they've added a bunch of new products that don't look so bad (especially considering the output is always 100% guaranteed) - This one in particular caught my eye:
http://www.o-like.com/b2b_cpinfo.asp?id=993
Half a watt for half a $K? Not too shabby compared to the other options out there for this kind of power, most of which are $1400 or more, IMHO
Just thought I'd share this one!
Yea right.
Maybe I should use cheaper optics to make the RPL divergence twice as bad and take it from 1.0mrad to 2.0mrad (this is a enormous decrease in beam quality), only offer a 90 day warranty as chance are they won't last much longer than that unless it's sitting a drawer most of the time, and lastly lie about the power and never mention if it's average or peak and only limit it to a 100 second duty cycle.
Funny thing is that the 350mw they list that is IR filtered costs $20 more than their supposed 500mw. What this most likely means is that their 350mw is just the same as the their "500mw" except it's filtered, which means that they are counting 150mw of IR in the 500. These also use cheap diodes that won't last long at all.
I'm getting pretty tired of this places advertising way more power than they can provide, if 500mw were easy to come by I would surely be selling them on our website. I've only had a hand full of them in literally thousands of units, they are very few and far between even with the yield of our higher quality components that are used.
Give me some feedback back here, is this the kind of laser everyone wants; short or no warranty, much lower beam qualilty, over statement of actual output power?
I'm sure everyone wants the best support, top quality/performance, long warranty and to be surprised that the average output power ends up being more rather than much less, have a laser that a year or 3 down the road still performs and on top of all of this at the lowest price, but in most cases you get what you pay and you can't have those kinds of prices and have a good long lasting product.
So I'm open to suggestions here as a good business person should provide their customers with the products they want.
Do you want a very low cost laser that competes with the o-like, boblaser and others?
I can provide it at just as low a price and probably even lower, but all the specs would same as these, warranty would be the same, over rating the power and quoting peak power without IR filtering would be the same too as the playing field would need to be level.
Or on the other hand would you want an RPL-260 and even though rated at only 260 would be outputting more than 260 and over a long period of time (average output power) have much better beam quality so it's would have better long distance burning power and actually have a higher average output power than most of those others on the market with lousy specs and overrated output power that claim to be "500mw" just so that you can have the bragging rights that you bought a "500".
Yea, I kinda pissed at these places for lying through their (not flaming any particular company here) teeth about their specs, output rating and performance and then when the customer gets their product and it fails within a few months of regular use they email me wishing they would have gotten an RPL and wondering if I can fix the laser they bought from some other retailer.
Most people out there think they know what real green laser power looks like, but not until they buy or use someone elses RPL do they really know.
Just looking to provide what the customer wants, let me know, it's much easier and a heck of alot cheaper to build lower quality lasers tahn is is to do it right and have to price them accordingly.
