Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum and laser in general. I was drawn in by a site offering DIY kits for handheld units from 500mW to 2200mW about a week ago and have been researching CW laser diodes ever since. I'm starting to get a pretty good basic idea of the physics involved with the help of this forum, but I have a question:
One of the "custom" builds available on this site is a 445 nm 5,000mW unit for a small fortune: Survival Laser 5 445nm Parts Bundle. After reading some posts on this site though, I was under the impression that the M-140 diode was "king of the hill" right now in terms of high output CW diodes which max at about 2,200mW @ 1.8A. Is this not the case - are they using another diode? Or have they just dialed up the amperage to way beyond what the M-140 is spec'd for? I’ve decided against a cookie-cutter kit like this one, but I’m curious as to how they got that kind of output.
I'm also trying to verify a basic formula that will estimate the output of a laser (not counting diode efficiency, lens-gain(?), resistance in the unit etc.) I know Power(W)=Voltage x Current and if I recall correctly Frequency = 1 / Wavelength.
I have been using the following formula, mainly because it appears to be correct, but I don't have the physic knowledge to know for sure:
PLaser= (V x I)/(1/λ)
Is this close? Or does someone know a better formula that works better for CW diode laser output?
Thanks for your help and hopefully I will be able to post pics of my first build soon!
One of the "custom" builds available on this site is a 445 nm 5,000mW unit for a small fortune: Survival Laser 5 445nm Parts Bundle. After reading some posts on this site though, I was under the impression that the M-140 diode was "king of the hill" right now in terms of high output CW diodes which max at about 2,200mW @ 1.8A. Is this not the case - are they using another diode? Or have they just dialed up the amperage to way beyond what the M-140 is spec'd for? I’ve decided against a cookie-cutter kit like this one, but I’m curious as to how they got that kind of output.
I'm also trying to verify a basic formula that will estimate the output of a laser (not counting diode efficiency, lens-gain(?), resistance in the unit etc.) I know Power(W)=Voltage x Current and if I recall correctly Frequency = 1 / Wavelength.
I have been using the following formula, mainly because it appears to be correct, but I don't have the physic knowledge to know for sure:
PLaser= (V x I)/(1/λ)
Is this close? Or does someone know a better formula that works better for CW diode laser output?
Thanks for your help and hopefully I will be able to post pics of my first build soon!
