Gazoo said:
Hi Xenodius,
Congratulations on whatever you graduated on. You have good grandparents and I am sure you deserve it. I think the most satisfying part of all of this is the satisfaction we all get from building our own lasers. Even though my first, and so far only laser is mounted in a big flashlight, I can take pride in knowing I did it, and I can do it again. I really am looking forward to these diodes and am happy I was able to get in on the group buy. The specs on these diodes are very good. Thanks to Greg for making this possible.
Technically, I am still in high school; I finished all my core classes a couple years and have been taking college accredited classes for 2 years now, 2 more to go. So... they figured thats close enough!
But yeah, I know, there is
lots of satisfaction to be gained in making a pointer yourself. I wonder how hard it would be to make your owndiodes... ROTFL!
>.>
Not only is this a fun project and a cool toy to mess around (safely) with, but its actually somewhat useful for me too, since I don't have a good way to light my stars from a distance, and a little black powder coat would take care of that really well! (takes 3 seconds or so of direct low-temp flame to light them normally)
I REALLY want to post a video of the laser at, say, 15ft focus aimed at about 1g of unconfined flash powder on the ground. I lit 15g inside a pringles can with a foam ball on top, and it shot smoke about 40 feet high and threw the ball about 60-70!
You can get *everything* you need to make flash powder on ebay... ;D I got mine back before the Firefox ban though!
And again, thanks SO much Greg! Cant wait to post some videos of the whole thing!