Help! Affordable pulsed laser

[adam1128]

Does anyone know of an affordable 532nm pulsed laser? It should be ideally <$500, ~40mw (average power), and allow me to set the repetition rate to ~20hz, and pulse duration to ~0.1ms.
If it were battery powered that would also be helpful. Also, if it had to be at a different wavelength (but still visible light) that might be ok too.

Why? I'm working on an invention that, as part of it, uses something like a Laser Genetics ND3 as a laser illuminator. It needs to send a wide beam of a specific wavelength and illuminate a large area. I realise now for technical reasons it would work much better with a pulsed laser, so I'd like to replace the CW laser in the ND3 with a pulsed version of essentially the same thing: That delivers the same average power (40mw, so would still be 2m classification, as I understand it), but that lets me set the repetition rate to 20hz and then pulse duration to 0.1ms - so that I have 20 pulses that are ~500 times brighter than the continuous wave.

I'm still learning so forgive my naivety!

Thanks,
Adam

 

[Alaskan]

Maybe you can find a used ND:YAG or some such source pulsing high peak power into a SHG crystal for your green output. 500 dollars isn't enough for anything new and likely not enough for a heavy old boat anchor laser which runs off of AC either. How portable does it need to be? You might look into CrystaLaser and see what they have, they make some small pulsed lasers, but $$$.

http://www.crystalaser.com/new/qswitchedlaser.html

See if one offered on ebay is Q-switched: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=crystalaser&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_sop=15

There might be a solution for you, let me ponder this awhile, maybe someone can give you the info you need before I can. I need to find a HV source for my hat first.

 

[mojo_1234]

Does anyone know of an affordable 532nm pulsed laser? It should be ideally <$500, ~40mw (average power), and allow me to set the repetition rate to ~20hz, and pulse duration to ~0.1ms.
If it were battery powered that would also be helpful. Also, if it had to be at a different wavelength (but still visible light) that might be ok too.

Why? I'm working on an invention that, as part of it, uses something like a Laser Genetics ND3 as a laser illuminator. It needs to send a wide beam of a specific wavelength and illuminate a large area. I realise now for technical reasons it would work much better with a pulsed laser, so I'd like to replace the CW laser in the ND3 with a pulsed version of essentially the same thing: That delivers the same average power (40mw, so would still be 2m classification, as I understand it), but that lets me set the repetition rate to 20hz and then pulse duration to 0.1ms - so that I have 20 pulses that are ~500 times brighter than the continuous wave.

I'm still learning so forgive my naivety!

Thanks,
Adam

 

[mojo_1234]

hi, affordable is DIY. You just need to replace the driver of any of these cheap 532nm modules by some TTL or analogue drivers available. Set current properly and around 100kHz shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Cyparagon]

Adam, how have you determined those are your necessary parameters?

 

[Jim H]

For a pulsed laser, the rating isn't determined just by average power, but also by peak power of the pulse. Not sure what the exact formula is, but I have a feeling that a 500x power pulse would not stay in the same classification. Also, 1ms seems rather long for a pulsed laser if you were thinking q switched, as they have nanosecond or shorter pulses. To get a millisecond pulse with greater power, I would think you would have to start with a much higher power pump laser, and not use switching to increase peak power. I'm not an expert, but those are my thoughts with what I know.

 

[Alaskan]

That’s why I pointed him towards a Q switched pumped laser, just switching a diode fast will not produce high peak power unless the diode is designed for very high short pulse current. I too have limited knowledge in this area, but I believe that is the direction to research; pumped Q switched SHG lasers.

There are direct to wavelength diodes which can do that, but I’ve never found one in the visible spectrum which can. High peak power pulsed IR diodes at 905 nm are easy to find but not at 500 mw average power and 1 ms. 905 nm pulse lasers are used in golf range finders, but their average power is low at about one half to 1 milliwatt and their pulse widths are much shorter to produce higher peak power (and the required higher pulse current to do that). There are higher power LIDAR pulsed range measuring lasers but again, IR and $$$.

High peak power pulse diodes could be produced for visible spectrum but without a product to safely use them in are not being made that I know of, but I would be happy to have one.

Find one for me!

Edit: Now you got me wondering how much current can we push through a NDG7475 525 nm green laser diode at 1 ms pulse width 20 times a second. My WAG guess is you could do 2-4 X the rated output power for some period of time at greatly reduced life, but much higher and poof!

Maybe I would be surprised how high?