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FrozenGate by Avery

How to make a flat beam

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Spazztheclown

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I am doing a haunted house for my 2nd year, one of the rooms is going to be toxic clowns, I want to create a fog barrier, I know to achieve this I need a flat laser beam, or at least 4 one for each corner of the room, can I achieve this with laser pointers and some kind of glass that will make it flat, or do I need to get laser diodes already flat. I very very little about lasers. I plan on using green lasers and a fog machine, lasers will be around 4 ft off the ground so the clowns can hide underneath the fog. Thanks everyone
 





Spazztheclown said:
Can I use a regular laser pointer don't have a ton of money to do this
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Define "regular". But probably not, ideally you wouldn't use any sort of laser pointer unless you only want to have the fog wall "on" for a minute at a time - laser pointers aren't designed to run continually and will usually overheat.
 
Whats the best way then, what about a laser diode, a haunt I worked at used diodes in a heatsink, would I get the same effect if the beam is not flat,
 
Spazztheclown said:
Whats the best way then, what about a laser diode, a haunt I worked at used diodes in a heatsink, would I get the same effect if the beam is not flat,
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You'd use something like this for the laser if you wanted to run it continually: 532nm 100mW Green Laser Module Industrail Design with Cooling Fan | eBay

That has a decent sized heatsink and would run off of a 12VDC mains adapter.

Of course - that module is rated at ~100mW - you'd need to take safety into account at those power levels. 100mW has the potential to cause eye damage from direct exposure. It'd be a good idea to make sure no one can come in contact with the beam - chances are they'd be fine seeing as it'd be scanning a line, but there's always a slight chance that someone gets injured then you end up with a lawsuit on your hands... You could go for lower power - say 10mW instead of 100mW, just means you'd need more fog for the visibility to be the same. :beer:
 
Spazztheclown said:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A...C_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=laser+diode&psc=1

How would I hook this up, can it run continuously, does it need a heatsink
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You'd hook it up to a 5V power supply. That module is eye safe, but it's not going to be even nearly bright enough for what you want to do - you'd need a ridiculous amount of fog to have the flat beam from that be even remotely visible. Would probably be fine without a heatsink at least... You'd want to go with something green (532nm, OR 520nm are both available - each have their own downsides/upsides) as the human eye is far more sensitive to green than it is to red given the same output power.

How long have you got to put this together? I'd suggest spending some time reading about lasers and basic electronics theory - if you need to ask how to hook that up it sounds like you could do with some better understanding before continuing... It really doesn't get much simpler than hooking up one of those 5V red modules... No offense intended...
 
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None taken I have until Oct but want to get something put together, I like what you showed me on eBay
 
Spazztheclown said:
None taken I have until Oct but want to get something put together, I like what you showed me on eBay
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OK - Plenty of time to learn then! :D

That's the sort of thing I'd go for - as I said, not necessarily that powerful, 50mW may make for a better trade off between visibility and eye safety. That said - without an LPM you can never be quite sure of the actual power on these cheap Chinese modules...

The other benefit of the module I linked (other than continuous duty cycle) is ease of mounting and not needing to zip tie/clamp/tape down a momentary push button to have it work like you would with a lot of pointers out there. Runs of 12VDC too - not batteries, so no need to jerry-rig the power supply either.

You could run all 4 off of something like this: Professsional Power Supply for Industrial 110V 240V Input 12VDC 3A Output | eBay
 
Spazztheclown said:
532nm 50mW Industrial Green Line Laser Module 120° Fan Angle w Bracket PSU | eBay

How bout this this looks like.it would be exactly what I need and it shoots flat beam
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That may work just fine - certainly easier than using the rotating mirror option. I haven't really played around with those line lenses a whole lot so someone else may want to chime in on how good that looks vs a scanned liquid sky.

Spazztheclown said:
What's lpm
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Laser Power Meter
 
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