john_lawson said:
just freaking make yourself or buy yourself one of these
http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1224130203/0#4
you'll say holy crap that looooooks BAAAAAAAAAAD SA
Hey, thanks John! [smiley=happy.gif]
But I don't think that’s what he's talking about, although I do agree, buy one and you will be happy to see the beam! The 70mW does burn very well, and you can even feel it on your skin focused to infinity, not focused for burning (then it burns the heck out of you). But that's ok if I never sell them, because I plan on giving at least one away for a Christmas present. Plus I don't mind having a couple extra blu-ray lasers!
It's said that these lasers vary +/- 5nm, so some could be 400nm, and some could be 410nm. Some people can't hardly see the dot at all at 400, and they probably wouldn't be able to see it much better at 410nm. Daguin showed me a pair he built I believe one was 145mW and the other was 115mW (correct me if I'm wrong Dave) and the 115mW looked noticeably brighter. But it is luck of the draw, and there's no way to acquire a LD one nm or another, unless you know someone that has a whole bunch and doesn't mind testing each one for you (would help if they had a spectrometer) and get you the one that appears brightest.
Last night was foggy, and man, nice violet beam to the sky looked just about as bright as a 5mW green on a clear night.
You can also see the dot in the night about as far as you can see a 5-10mW red.
But yes, the visibility of the blu-ray isn't particularly good since it is at the very edge of our human eye's visible spectrum. And of coarse 473nm is much more visible.