Hello all

[MNLegoBoy]

I mainly focus on flashlights, but i'd figured id also join here, I mainly want to stick with 5mw or less just cause i like being able to see the colors of them. Orange is my favorite color, and one of my first goals is building an orangeish laser pointer. Ideally i'd like to have a full rainbow of eye safe laser pointers at some point

 

[Snecho]

Welcome to the forum!

I think you'll find out quick that true <5mW laser pointers are actually quite rare.

Most commercially available lasers are only offered at ~100mW and up. Mostly in the several hundred mW range and into the multi watt range. Even the cheap eBay ones listed as under 5mW are around 80-200mW. And the ones that are made specifically under 5mW are costly.

The best bet would be to build your own, but similarly, most diodes are rated much higher power than that so you would have to significantly underdrive them, which could present other problems.

 

[MNLegoBoy]

I know their not that common especially in the colors I want, but that's what makes it a challenge and I'm always up for a good challenge

 

[paul1598419]

Welcome to the LPF. 635nm is about as close to orange as your going to get with a direct diode laser. Even the 632.8nm HeNes don't really look that orange. Only by comparison to the 650nm and 660nm ones. A true orange would be closer to 600nm.

 

[MNLegoBoy]

Yeah I know there aren't many orange, but I for some reason remember seeing a like 615 or something close to that in a diode, I might just have to wait for that one then, maybe a sky blue 10mw underdriven would be cool.

 

[paul1598419]

Now, that is doable. Look for a Sharp Gh04850B2G laser diode. You want one under 489nm. You should be able to get one binned on DTR's site as I believe he has a spectrometer now. I have one doing exactly 488nm and gave my daughter one doing <487nm. They are a very light sky blue color, at least to my eyes. Drive it at 25 mA if you want it to be that low in power.

 

[andrew6NB]

Hello and welcome