YES I WANT TO ZAP THEM BEFORE THEY ZAP ME!Setting bees on fire at @ 50 feet sounds dangerous, anything you set on fire you should also be able to put out and if you can reach to put it out then you can reach to use wasp and hornet spray in the 1st place.
Seriously a nest in a tree or in a gable vent.......or anywhere out of reach could smolder for quite some time before causing a disaster, I don't want to be a killjoy but you should understand that accidents do happen and starting a fire out of your reach is a recipe for an accident.
Yes I get it that you only want to zap the bees, but your focused beam could unknowingly start a smolder that may not ignite for hours, it's worse than setting a rat on fire that then runs ablaze into a hole in your wall....oops, because with the burning rat you would know, the point is burning at a distance really needs to be done in a controlled manner such as in a fire pit or somewhere that you have complete control.
If you want to experiment with correcting the 44's very divergent beam then these c-lenses are what you want, but please remember to protect yourself and others when lasing and although lasers are awesome tools like with most anything else no 1 tool fits every need.
Enjoy and stay safe.
the dome skin is .125 or 1/8. 14 foot1 inch diam and weighs 600lbs even still At that thickness is a very stiff material to get a correct curve from.
I don't think we want a bee blaster thread, it's not PC and sadly our free country is not so free, when some knuckle dragger causes a problem I don't want to have taken part in a dozen poorly named threads that will be noted as source material so.....
Holding your focused spot on something the size of a dime at 50 feet is not going to happen free handed, to burn/cut anything will still take a certain amount of time dwelling on it unless you have BIG BIG power and 7W is not that kind of power unless you can focus it very tight and then you can do some small/thin item work pretty quickly.
Ok so next I can hear you say that you want to better focus your beam.
If this GB proves too slow you could use another 6X pair as you want to correct the aggressive axis of the nubm44's beam before using spherical optics to manipulate the corrected beam to get a better far field focus.
To reach out any distance means a beam expander after correction for the 44 diode, so alignment is picky but not at all impossible, I have found and continue to find that building in adjustability throughout my optics train is a good policy, the main issue seems to be how the diode seats in its module, just a fraction of a mm of misalignment multiplies over distance so aligning your c-lens pair to produce a straight and level beam also means making sure your beam at the exit of your primary lens is centered in your device if your beam expander is going to be centered on the other end of your device and even then building in some adjustability is a good idea, I have had to jury rig a mount more than once for my BE but I have also been lucky, there's not much play and even less as an optics train grows.
Have you worked with the 44 diode yet ?
If not get some protective eye glasses that attenuate 440 - 465nm or what ever wavelength you will be working with and get familiar with the laser, then try out the c-lens pair and if you want to go further add a beam expander, someone has suggested and I had thought about before using a FAC type lens near the diode window, but I don't think it's practical.....but maybe you will find a better way.
I suggest bee spray for bees and as you are an experimenter enjoy the lasers for what they are, and if you can safely multitask later then good for you but knowing the potential dangers to bystanders is by far the most important thing, I say potential dangers because we don't allow any real dangers to manifest and make sure you don't, I share information because I enjoy lasers, what you do is at your own risk but for god sake and I say this with respect for not just you but any and all readers, never hurt anyone else through a careless or negligent act, it's illegal and it's wrong.
That said I hope you also enjoy lasers for all their uses and aesthetic purposes and stay safe.
