^True enough but the difficulties and cost of building a DPSS system to get green are not small. It means that a prebuilt module is really the only way to get green at present. You have probably seen this thread but it demonstrates quite clearly what the issues are -
I obviously don't know your experience but if you've not built a laser before I would steer you away from any high powered IR build to start with. As the light is far less visible, (I bet it is 808nm, right?), it gives a false sense of security but will blind you just as quickly as any other 300mW laser.
PHR, (bluray), and LOC, (red), LDs are available for less than $10 these days so I think going bluray is a great idea.
Check out the links in my sig for handy tips on harvesting. Apologies if you know these things already. 30 posts is a bit of a funny threshold. Long enough to know you like lasers and a certain amount of things but you still may not have built your own. :beer:
