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Lowest power required to burn is...

Zom-B

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Mar 25, 2008
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I was bored so I took my adjustable red and put on some goggles and tried to find the minimum power at which I can burn stuff. I mounted my burning lens on the laser for this (some glass plano-convex lens with f=35mm)

I burned black plastic, and I adjusted the power down until it only just burns. I aimed it at the power meter and it read about 41mW.

Then I burned fake leather and it burned far better than black plastic. I once again turned it down until it barely burns and after that the meter read just below 5mW! Unsure if it was correct, I took my stable 5mW laser pen and put the lens on it and surely enough it burned too.
 





Zom-B

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It was with an aixiz acrylic. The laser is just a regular one focused at inf and the glass lens is for focusing it back to a dot nicely.
 

diachi

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Feb 22, 2008
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5mW :eek: reaaalllyy ???

Never expected it to be that low, not even with BR !

-Adam
 
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my CORE burned with a lens ;D but then i broke it pot modding it lol. its soon to be a BLU-CORE (TM) :cool:
 

Ace82

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This topic should be in the "red lasers" section, because in the general section, you're topic is slightly misleading. It depends on LOTS of things, power and wavelength being the main ones. Is your meter thermal?
 
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If the temperature of the room is 25 degrees. And the material you want to burn has an ignition temperature of 25.00000000000000000000001 degrees. You could light it with a 0.00000001mW laser, or some other low number.

Lets talk instead about the lowest power to burn something specific. Like matches! What is the lowest power required to light a match? Then you get a better answer :)
 
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Mar 14, 2008
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And even then, different matches are harder. I got a couple Red Heads which don't light after a few seconds with my 100mW bluray, but my DX matches which are black basically explode instantly.
 




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