IR is rather boring, I agree and a 300mw IR diode won't burn as quickly as a higher power visible light blue or violet diode can which although both dangerous, especially the 405nm violet diodes, at least you can see it better than IR. I probably shouldn't even mention the 405 because that's another problem, although a great burner, it appears dim when it really has a lot of power, our vision is only 1 percent as sensitive to 405nm violet as 532nm green, so its brightness is misleading but man, that is one hell of a burner, much quicker than any of the 300mw IR diodes I have because it can be focused into an incredibly small dot where IR doesn't focus so tightly.
That said and I don't recommend playing around with IR as a newbie, once you have built a visible spectrum laser to understand them better, a quick way to get a IR burner is to convert a cheap 532nm laser pointer. I bought a 8 dollar one from China on ebay and just removed the KTP crystal assembly from the diode by popping it off with a screw driver, then I had to put a G2 type of lens in the other end of the lens barrel where it was within 8mm of the laser diode to focus it, but it worked and puts out 300mw and will burn too, but not nearly as fast or as intense as my 800mw 405nm laser pointer which I won't even use very often I consider it so dangerous, I'm afraid of an accident.
