Jayge91
New member
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2018
- Messages
- 9
- Points
- 3
Hello LPF,
I goofed up and made a build thread, not thinking to say hello first, so allow me to properly introduce myself.
My name's Jonathon, and I'm from Illinois. Since I was a little kid, I've always been fascinated with taking things apart and learning how they work. I'm currently working on radar systems for the navy in California, and couldn't think of a cooler job to have.
Over the last few years, lasers have really caught my attention. I've been stalking the forums for a couple of months now, and LPF has proven to be an invaluable source of knowledge and information. I'm so glad I stumbled upon it. I'll be honest, at first I fell into the black hole of overrated garbage pointer websites, to include WL as well as others. "Most powerful laser....." Yeah right. As I started to cross reference them and find that there were gigantic inconsistencies between the companies, I came across this forum. Huge props to Sta (don't know if you'll see this) for shedding light on the subject in this thread. Before long, I realized that getting a powerful pointer in the US is basically impossible so I decided to take it into my own hands and build my own.
I figured I didn't want to put too much money in at first, and started with a questionable A140 diode from eBay for $20. I got my host and other parts from SL, knowing that I could at least recoup something by getting their flashlight conversion kit if things didn't work out. I couldn't be more pleased. Thanks to DTR and his testing threads, I was able to make a very conservative guess on a safe operating current and it's solid. Once I have a LPM, I'll feel more comfortable cranking things up to push performance a little bit. This just makes me want to build more lol. I'm definitely a sucker for big performance in small packages, so that might be the theme for one of my next projects, but a CNC engraver is definitely high on my list of interests so far. As easy as it would be to grab a nice looking setup from banggood, I'll probably end up building one from scratch, as that would be way more fun.
So far, the only thing I've found difficult on this site is the search functions. I'm sure I'm just not using it right, and came up on a post about that just a few minutes ago, so I'll dig in there and see what I can find. I've mainly just resorted to using a google search with laserpointerforums.com in the search box before what I'm looking for. Mostly out of laziness lol. The one thing I haven't been able to find yet is a driver circuit that has different brightness settings, similar to most CREE flashlights. That would be awesome, having a couple different current settings to cycle through. Who knows? Maybe I'll have to make my own and share my findings
I goofed up and made a build thread, not thinking to say hello first, so allow me to properly introduce myself.
My name's Jonathon, and I'm from Illinois. Since I was a little kid, I've always been fascinated with taking things apart and learning how they work. I'm currently working on radar systems for the navy in California, and couldn't think of a cooler job to have.
Over the last few years, lasers have really caught my attention. I've been stalking the forums for a couple of months now, and LPF has proven to be an invaluable source of knowledge and information. I'm so glad I stumbled upon it. I'll be honest, at first I fell into the black hole of overrated garbage pointer websites, to include WL as well as others. "Most powerful laser....." Yeah right. As I started to cross reference them and find that there were gigantic inconsistencies between the companies, I came across this forum. Huge props to Sta (don't know if you'll see this) for shedding light on the subject in this thread. Before long, I realized that getting a powerful pointer in the US is basically impossible so I decided to take it into my own hands and build my own.
I figured I didn't want to put too much money in at first, and started with a questionable A140 diode from eBay for $20. I got my host and other parts from SL, knowing that I could at least recoup something by getting their flashlight conversion kit if things didn't work out. I couldn't be more pleased. Thanks to DTR and his testing threads, I was able to make a very conservative guess on a safe operating current and it's solid. Once I have a LPM, I'll feel more comfortable cranking things up to push performance a little bit. This just makes me want to build more lol. I'm definitely a sucker for big performance in small packages, so that might be the theme for one of my next projects, but a CNC engraver is definitely high on my list of interests so far. As easy as it would be to grab a nice looking setup from banggood, I'll probably end up building one from scratch, as that would be way more fun.
So far, the only thing I've found difficult on this site is the search functions. I'm sure I'm just not using it right, and came up on a post about that just a few minutes ago, so I'll dig in there and see what I can find. I've mainly just resorted to using a google search with laserpointerforums.com in the search box before what I'm looking for. Mostly out of laziness lol. The one thing I haven't been able to find yet is a driver circuit that has different brightness settings, similar to most CREE flashlights. That would be awesome, having a couple different current settings to cycle through. Who knows? Maybe I'll have to make my own and share my findings