I've already got an RPL-260, but still I couldn't sleep the night before and spent 1/2 the morning looking out the window and waiting for the fedex truck. As much as I love my RPL-260, it's doubly so with the 325. The performance certification I ordered with it shows an average output power of 346mW. It shows photos taken of the power meter with pictures of the output vs time graph, histogram of this test, 3sigma graph and picture of the statistics display of the meter. Beam diameter of 1.43mm and divergence of .822mrad at 30 feet.
Last night I set it up outside at a co-workers home where I could get so good distance for balloon popping and popped one at ~40-45 feet, but it did take a little time; maybe 10-15 seconds and that was with the RPL duct taped to the top of a camera tripod to keep it still and the balloon taped to the fence. Then we went to the garage and melted our names into the side of some old tires. Then found a plastic 35mm film can (black); I had read of the RPL-325 burning through them. From 4 inches away it melted a nice little hole of about 1mm diameter through one side in short order. All of this was done on the diode current level #4 as that is where it's visually brightest, past level 4 it doesn't seem to get any brighter. I pushed the recommended duty cycle and ran it for over 7 minutes before giving it about a minute of down time and running it for several more minutes. I am completely amazed that technology has progressed so much in the past few years to allow so much brightness and power to be emitted from a small handheld device running on one small battery just a little larger than an AA cell.
I just can't describe the feeling of power and the beauty/purity of the green beam, it has captured me; when I visted the optotronics website on Friday and saw that they now have the RPL-325 and the warranty on all new RPL lasers for 12 months; I couldn't resist and had get more power.
Jack is very cool, I told him I didn't have a need for the free premium pointer and if they could give me a discount on the 35 piece optics kit in exchange for the free pointer, his answer was no problem and they changed the free pointer to a free optics kit, now that's what I call service!
I'm going to borrow a nice camera from a buddy next week and I'll post some pictures and maybe do a short review.
Can I put up pictures before posting 20 times, or does that just apply to links?
Now I need to go over and vote for the best laser company.
Last night I set it up outside at a co-workers home where I could get so good distance for balloon popping and popped one at ~40-45 feet, but it did take a little time; maybe 10-15 seconds and that was with the RPL duct taped to the top of a camera tripod to keep it still and the balloon taped to the fence. Then we went to the garage and melted our names into the side of some old tires. Then found a plastic 35mm film can (black); I had read of the RPL-325 burning through them. From 4 inches away it melted a nice little hole of about 1mm diameter through one side in short order. All of this was done on the diode current level #4 as that is where it's visually brightest, past level 4 it doesn't seem to get any brighter. I pushed the recommended duty cycle and ran it for over 7 minutes before giving it about a minute of down time and running it for several more minutes. I am completely amazed that technology has progressed so much in the past few years to allow so much brightness and power to be emitted from a small handheld device running on one small battery just a little larger than an AA cell.
I just can't describe the feeling of power and the beauty/purity of the green beam, it has captured me; when I visted the optotronics website on Friday and saw that they now have the RPL-325 and the warranty on all new RPL lasers for 12 months; I couldn't resist and had get more power.
Jack is very cool, I told him I didn't have a need for the free premium pointer and if they could give me a discount on the 35 piece optics kit in exchange for the free pointer, his answer was no problem and they changed the free pointer to a free optics kit, now that's what I call service!
I'm going to borrow a nice camera from a buddy next week and I'll post some pictures and maybe do a short review.
Can I put up pictures before posting 20 times, or does that just apply to links?
Now I need to go over and vote for the best laser company.
