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- Sep 20, 2008
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I wonder if it would be possible to do something like focus the beam out to a VERY specific width at its widest point and then use an IR thermometer to measure how many degrees above room temperature it is able to heat said object. Perhaps a quarter sharpied black?
If you are wanting to go by burning things, I think you are going the wrong direction. A more reliable direction would be to see how wide you can unfocus the beam before there is no interaction. EX: How wide is the beam when it is no longer able to mark a black CD case. At tight focus the dot is too small to accurately make them even and things happen to fast to accurately measure anything other than seat of the pants.
I did that when comparing my arctic to my DIY. Beam wise, outdoors it is VERY hard to differentiate them. I thought perhaps the arctic was the brighter of the two. Then I defocused my DIY to the same width as the arctic and went to town on some CD cases. The arctic takes about 5 seconds to burn through, the DIY about half of the time. Even that is a bad measure though, I should have went wider to get a more accurate reading BUT I didnt want to mess with the focus on the arctic.
What you are referring to is located here....
http://laserpointerforums.com/f42/simple-laser-power-meter-using-ir-thermometer-26341.html
Jerry