most powerful diode for DIY

[ben74]

Just wondering what is the most powerful red diode that can been made into a pen laser.

 

[styropyro]

Most will say about 300mW for an open can diode, but you can get some 9mm 500mW red laser diodes that are multimode that I guess you could turn into a pen laser with a low duty cycle, the beam specs would be horrible though.

 

[ben74]

Would you been abel to focus the 500mW because that would take away the bad beam specs.

 

[chido]

It would still have bad beam specs. Plus those diodes are expensive, even on ebay.

 

[styropyro]

Yeah, the prices on those things are horrible. They are near impossible to collimate because they have such a wide emitting area IIRC.