Cheap violet-emitting laser pens

[The LED (& Laser) Museum]

I snagged a violet laser pen from Ebay not long ago; it is very over spec.
Looks like ~45mW at ~410nm, and it cost me $2.16 including shipping.

It is published to have an output of 1mW.

Here is their Ebay shop.

I no longer own or have access to a spectrometer or a LPM so I have to "eyeball" those values, but I've gotten pretty good over the years.

 

[Gryphon]

Those cheap pens are remarkable when you consider at the beginning of the Blu-Ray revolution we were ripping apart super expensive players for 10mW's of violet. My last pen laser of that style was 60mW @ 409nm, amazing for just a couple bucks!

 

[The LED (& Laser) Museum]

I remember my first violet laser in 2007 was a Wicked Lasers Sonar; it gave me 11.6mW pulsed (1.93mW avg.) at a cost of 11,608.3 CNY ($1,732.19) in 2010 dollars.

 

[Gryphon]

I didn't have that kind of money back then, but I day dreamed about that laser a lot. Eventually I would pickup one of the HD DVD add-ons for the Xbox for something like $120 to build my first violet. Those were the good ol' days

 

[The LED (& Laser) Museum]

I didn't have the $$$ either; it was sent to me for evaluation on my website.

LEDs - Gallium Indium Nitride UV, violet, purple, blue, aqua, turquoise, green, white. Also Gallium Arsenide and others. New LED MUSEUM! GaN, InGaN, SiC, GaAs, GaP, GaAlP, ZnSe, flashlight, flashlights.

A site devoted to testing of LEDs in all common chemistries. Includes test target illumination photos of many LED samples, LED museum, and LED flashlight testing.

www.ledmuseum.net

 

[The LED (& Laser) Museum]

I looked over the other 31 violet-emitting laser reviews on my website, prices range from 99￠to $1,732.19 (typically in the $10 range) and most of them are way overspec.
Most of then were spec'd at 5mW but were in the 15mW to 80mW range.