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FrozenGate by Avery

50mw blue laser show

T

Tallaxo

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Saw this on Ebay, I fail to see why Blue handheld lasers ie. Aurora and Spyder BX are so expensive for the mw. This little box of tricks is 50mw of blue laser with built in scanner running on sound active or DMX control. I fully understand that it is a "lab" style laser inside with TEC cooling. But does portability and lower power output really command those sort of prices?

Forget the DMX scanner for a second, but if you wanted to rip this apart for the module, surely this has to be well worth the money for 50mw of 473nm blue.

I think we are all being led up the garden path, when it comes to laser companies dictating the price for blues.

Jase

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/50mW-Blue-Las...4306042QQihZ004QQcategoryZ29944QQcmdZViewItem
 





Agreed, Jase - the prices on Blues are WAY too high for my comfort level...but, if you have blue, you will be addicted, as I am to this Aurora ! I have tseen the CNI model of blue being offered for much less than some companies sell them for - I think everyone is "fixing" their prices so as to not run into problems with suppliers, perhaps - I really don't know. I wish there was some way to explain it better so we would ALL understand better !
Oh, and for hte record - that vendor, Davidlanling is VERY good.
 
Yeah, the prices on blues make greenies look cheap. First off blue DPSS just isn't in such a demand and with blue diodes coming out, it looks like blue DPSS may stay pretty high priced for a long time (at least in the lower mW range. Even with diodes there will be demand for blue DPSS in the higher power ranges).

Another problem though is that blue DPSS is a lot more inefficient than green DPSS. Green uses the common, strong 1064nm line of Nd:YAG or Nd:YVO4. Blue DPSS uses a much weaker and inefficient 946nm line of Nd:YAG to achieve its 473nm wavelength.

And if you're just looking for a blue lab module, don't go tearing up a $1k scanner - I could get you probably get you a 50mW blue for a few hundred cheaper.
 
Thanks Pseudo, I will bear that in mind when I save up the cash for a blue, however my point was, how can companies such as wicked, hope to justify such a huge pricetag for a blue laser that has an output that varies so widely, when another company can give you a Guaranteed 50mw module as well as a DMX scanner for half that price.
I understand the science behind producing 473nm light, but what I fail to understand is the huge difference in pricing
It will be great to see diode blues in the future, however I doubt the beam specs will be anywhere close to DPSS or an Argon.
Is Portability or waterproofing really worth that pricetag?

Jase
 
Well its not just WL, all portable blues are expensive. Look at all the 15mW blue portables and you'll notice the prices are often more than the cost of a 50mW+ module. Greens are similar though, just not to such an extent.

On the low end a pen portable is actually cheaper sometimes (with greens) because it doesnt require all the overhead parts like cooling, AC-DC PSU, etc. As you go up in power though it becomes harder and harder to make it portable though, and then the prices of modules start killing portables (I could get a 300mW module for well under half what I paid for my RPL 300).

Blues are similar, but they haven't really caught on in portable form - very little demand - so even portables are insanely expensive and demand better cooling than with a green portable. And with the few limited portable blues companies have an excuse to charge more. You may have noticed though that in the past year portable blues have been coming down in price on the low end whereas modules haven't fallen anywhere near as much.

Eventually portable blues would have gone the way of the greenie and we'd be seeing IIIA ones <$200 eventually... EXCEPT that now it looks like 440nm diodes may enter the market in the next few months/years. I don't really know how that will play out, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how they compete with blue DPSS in the <50mW area.

Sorry... I guess I haven't really answered the question... just rambled. Anyways though, remember that its not what portability and waterproofing cost to make, its what a company can get people to pay for it. Right now blue portables in general are expensive because its a relatively new innovation, and there's no significant demand bringing the cost of the innvation down, so WL can probably get away with selling a few top-dollar blues.

At least with the blue modules, lasershows and scientific apps keep them produced in reasonable quantity. With the green portables, there's enough of us power hungry freaks to buy up a bunch of IIIB pens. With portable blues though, you're gunna have an overhead cost to designing and starting production on them, and there's little demand to cover those costs so prices are relatively high on them.

Or... at least that's my best guess for it. I'm sure the exact explanation is a much more tangled and complicated web of factors.
 
i bet whn those 440nm diodes come out they will be even more expensive than the 405nm ones.. everybody will need them for there new laser T.V's! ;D
 
440 blue - ah, I can almost taste it. I know what that color is, and I wish they'd come out wiith those diodes soon!! :P (slobber)
 
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