GB: Firedragon 300mW 532nm - $149 - A GO! COLLECTING CONTACT INFO!

[rhd]

hmm, maybe lazerer?

Definitely not.

I'm not sold on them yet, they've got some "proving" to do in order to win me over. I find something inherently wrong with charging for a power guarantee certificate. Even if it's just $2, it leaves me questioning why they wouldn't be testing and guaranteeing ALL of their lasers.

I also am yet to see a real *deal* on their site. IE, a laser with higher quality or a lower price than I could pay for the equivalent elsewhere.

 

[LaZeRz]

Yeah I guess I need new cells!
Ok I don't have an lpm to test it but I have a 1.2 watt blue laser to compare it to. Its made by yob and its really a beast. The blue is brighter, when I put the goggles on I can tell that the blue dot is at least two times brighter. Is this how it's supposed to be? The green dot is big, probably bigger but a lot dimmer! I'm getting worried now, i thought the green was supposed to obliterate the blue!

Maybe the cells cant supply enough current to run it properly ?

Have you taken it outside at night and compared the beams? Also, your safety glasses might block out green more than blue... Atleast mine are like that.

If none of those things above help then you may have a bad unit and need to return it

 

[Obscurus]

It has to be the cell. For the second charge it lasted somewhere from 5 to 10 minutes. A good cell lasts about an hour?

 

[Boosted240]

Ok, its been 2 weeks, and my laser has seen pretty moderate use. Couple minutes here and there, maybe 5 minutes at once while taking that photo above. Decided to charge some cells, and meter this thing again. Let it cool a bit in front of a fan after each test, it never really got warm.

Here are the results:

Supplied Ultrafire cell:

Sanyo cell from Larry:

An oddball 2900mah cell from Larry:

Not real exciting results. :wtf:

 

[Obscurus]

Who knows perhaps in a couple of more weeks you will have a 200 mw laser. It's magic!

 

[Boosted240]

Who knows perhaps in a couple of more weeks you will have a 200 mw laser. It's magic!

Yeah not cool, as I was thinking of selling this thing. :lasergun:

 

[Extrion]

Well I finally got a chance to meter mine. I used a fully charged Tenergy 2600mA battery. I ran it for about 3 minutes at a time for 3 LPM readings and between the first and second readings I had it on for about 3 to 5 minutes measuring the dot to get a divergence and I have to say that I'm happy so far with the power of the laser. With battery fresh off the charger I got a peak of 487mW :drool: and avg of 396mW over 3 minutes. The divergence is horrible as has been mentioned before, but i wanted to see how bad so i measured the dot with glasses on to get just dot and at 4 ft I had .109" and at 19ft I had .75", which is 3.56 mRad on the mRad calculator. I have attached the 3 LPM graphs, the second one was cut short on the graphing but ran for the 3 minutes due to operator error.

 

[JohnTheRipper]

Is this model focusable? Just wondering...

 

[Extrion]

Well since you asked I went ahead and looked, it is focusable, but not with an external focus ring, you have to unscrew the cap and use a spanner wrench to adjust the focus.
So I went ahead and adjusted it and now i'm down to .5" at 19ft, so I imagine if I play around with it some more I can probably improve upon that. It also burns a fair bit quicker now than it did.

 

[Helios]

no not easily focusable but you can adjust the internal lens. Has anyone tried doing this to tweak the divergence? Maybe they just are not set well to infinity.

 

[Boosted240]

Well I finally got a chance to meter mine. I used a fully charged Tenergy 2600mA battery. I ran it for about 3 minutes at a time for 3 LPM readings and between the first and second readings I had it on for about 3 to 5 minutes measuring the dot to get a divergence and I have to say that I'm happy so far with the power of the laser. With battery fresh off the charger I got a peak of 487mW :drool: and avg of 396mW over 3 minutes. The divergence is horrible as has been mentioned before, but i wanted to see how bad so i measured the dot with glasses on to get just dot and at 4 ft I had .109" and at 19ft I had .75", which is 3.56 mRad on the mRad calculator. I have attached the 3 LPM graphs, the second one was cut short on the graphing but ran for the 3 minutes due to operator error.

Yours is doing *much* better than mine, looks good. I can't even average 300mW.

 

[Ra1nfade]

I metered mine again the other day its averaging around 325mW and peaking around 340mW. It used to peak at 393mW...

It's ok though it's still awesome to look at the beam

 

[Boosted240]

Mine goes up and down a lot, and flickers. I don't like to use it much anymore for fear of giving my cat seizures. :crackup:

I just hope the 2 I got for my friend and step dad are ok. This was the first high powered laser for both of them.

 

[Extrion]

I just recharged the battery I used earlier to see if the peak that I got was a fluke or not and it peaked higher and averaged higher after 5 minutes of running. It peaked at 499, almost hit 500, and the average for the run was 428. I think I got really lucky with mine and the beam looks much better after adjusting the inner lens.
Boosted, I have noticed that mine flickers a bit as well but i'm not sure if it's a problem or not the power readings don't fluctuate when it flickers and looking at the dot through glasses doesn't look it's mode hopping but then again I've never seen mode hop either. That sucks you're having issues with yours, I was hoping since they were coming in good everyone would get above average units.

Also wondering if RHD has gotten a chance to check out this new laser that was waiting for him. Be interested in hearing about that one soon. oke:

 

[blue bumblebee]

It peaked at 499, almost hit 500,

:O
you are so LUCKY!!!!
500mw 532 for $150?1?!?!?!?
best deal ever! :O:O:O:O

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Update... Finally placed my order.

Meant to do it quite a while back, but kept putting it off... since coupon code expires tomorrow, decided to finally pull the trigger.

The great news is... the laser went down in price so it's only $140

I'll post LPM chart as soon as I get it.

Btw, looking at the results from testing other lasers, it seems like these are very dependent on quality batteries... all my lpm tests are done with AW IMR 18650's.