Pman
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- Nov 28, 2012
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I was trying to think of some things that I've run into that are worth the $.
First of all let me say that everyone should really take some time to look through all the stuff that Fasttech offers and I'm not just talking about laser stuff although their 532nm modules are an absolute steel (actually more like brass I think
).
Those single white AAA pens are also a tremendous bargain and fantastic gifts for handing out when you show someone your lasers. Can't even begin to telly you easy it is to stun someone by showing them a tiny 532nm that is anywhere from about 30 to 90mw for $8 bucks and it has a star cap. If you ever buy one and don't care about the plastic case, remember that there's 2 tiny magnets in it you can scavenge.
Part of the big deal with them is you will usually get your stuff in 2 weeks and no matter how little it costs, shipping is free. They take paypal which is a big plus in my book.
Will say though that like all the other Chinese places, they are off now until the 7th.
If you live in the US, you can get a 3 pack 3 color lasers from seller
cjy3271788 shipped free and across country in about 4 days for a very good price and they are Pman approved. I just took a look and thought the price had gone up but then realized it was for 2 sets at $25.60. He used to be a different seller that shipped from China but then came to the states and started having them shipped to him in California. For a short time, his supplier tried to hose him over with an inferior product but I caught it and informed him and he got it straightened out and now they are the same ones that I show in my focusing pen tutorial. I've tried many others but his are the most consistent. I mean, hard to beat 6 pens with great output for under $5 each. You use the 532nm as they are (lots of IR), and turn the 650 and 405 units into fully focusable units so you can do the basic burning and balloon popping tricks with them besides for potential lumia kit stuff.
Haven't bought anything from O-like in some time but they have a very inexpensive nice heavy feeling unit that is fully focusable as is that has dramatic output increases by moving up to using a single 10440 with spacer. I'm taking about the 2 units I had bought at $12 each going from about 125mw with 2 AAA alkalines to 215mw! Holy increase in output batman!!!
100mW 650nm red laser pen/ focusable /Pop balloons.
Right now they only show 594 units in stock
Something I bought from Fasttech that I like a lot is the complete set of 8 ceramic screwdrivers (have to purchase individually). They make it easy to adjust stuff like the tiny pots on boards wthout the risk of shorting anything (trust me, I've done it).
Fasttech also sells "dummy cells" for AAA and AA that are the least expensive I have ever seen. They don't call them that though. They call them "Placeholders" and are located in more than one spot as they have black ones and yellow ones. It's too bad they don't sell other ones BUT they sell a wide variety of adapters to make all kinds of different batteries fit the size of other batteries. Do yourself a favor and take a look. It will surprise you how many crazy adapters they have.
The o-rings that I've sent out were also Fasttech items but will say that annoyingly the small 20 pack ones that say they are glow in the dark aren't. They look like they should be but they don't.
Those MXDL lights that lots of people use for builds (especially the longer ones) are cheaper at Fasttech than anywhere else I have seen. They really do make a nice host although I with they didn't come with the clip attached as it always leaves a scrape mark on the unit and the build will look "cleaner" without it on. $3.21 each.
Too many inexpensive flashlights for builds on Fasttech to mention. Suggest having it show lowest to highest price lights and just start looking through them.
If you are looking to see what a spyro is like and just want something to mess with then something like
Hot Mini Projector R&G DJ Disco Light Stage Xmas Party Laser Lighting Show for about $20 is pretty cool from ebay
Always save the extra pieces/parts from builds you do and try to separate stuff into categories. Never know when you will find something that fits on something else or need an obscure part.
There's so much stuff at Harbor freight in pieces/parts that you can start collecting such as spring kits and grommet kits and copper washer kits and rolls of heat shrink tubing and o-rings and 100 packs of razor blades and $1 epoxy etc...
In every car magazine I get there's always coupons for free stuff such as lights and screwdrivers and multimeter's and 20% off coupons etc. Hey, if the stuff is free it's free so why not. I own very expensive top of the line Fluke meters and you would think why would I care about a cheap free meter. Well, each one of my cars gets to carry one. Will say that you need to be very careful using a cheapo meter as switching through the wrong thing could cause the it to blow apart on you so always select what you want to read and then take the reading. DON'T switch the dial while taking a reading for safety sake
They also have a nice little pack of neo magnets (Fasttech has some nice sizes though).
Sorry I keep coming back to Fasttech but there's just too much good stuff I keep thinking of. If you buy the 10 pack of fart bombs DON'T set one off in your own house Lol. I set one off at our shop on a Monday morning in the mens room and everyone that came into the building was complaining about how terrible the sewer smell was while I was laughing so hard on the inside I had to walk away from everyone.
I have lots of other things I could mention for cool projects but I might step on someones toes and I'm not out to make anyone mad that I released a source for something.
There's some really great Lumia stuff to mess with and you should take a look in the laser shows category thread stuff. My friend Len (Hak) sells kits for Lumia stuff and he's a great guy.
Look around you all the time for interesting things for potential laser builds and you never know what you'll find. Every store I go in I keep my eyes open. Have seen some pretty cool off beat lights in places like auto parts stores.
Try to have fun and keep things in perspective. Remember, lasers are NOT a need and it's easy to get carried away with the spending. That's why when things get tight, have little fun projects you can mess with such as spyro or lumia stuff as there's always something else to try. It's good to have a few inexpensive 532nm modules sitting around as they always impress even at relatively low outputs. It never gets old for me seeing even a 25mw greenie beaming in the dark and you can put them in weird things like an altoids box.
405nm are lots of fun if you have a big glow in the dark piece of paper or wall or something. Krylon sells a spray called "Glowz" that is I think about $7 on Amazon that has gotten some not too great reviews but I actually like it a lot. The main complaint I believe is the glow doesn't last long. The glow when a 405nm hits it is really bright at first and then goes away in a descent enough time to make it fun to keep drawing on it with your laser. I've actually been thinking of trying to spray it on a really big piece of "blackout" cloth that I have that I have that I have on standby in case I wanted to throw up a portable white screen somewhere. It's just a white piece of kind of heavy material that you would find at any fabric store. Usually used to block light at a window. I think maybe you attach it (like sew it) to the back of drapes.
I think the piece I have is at least 5 feet wide by 10 feet long. Can't imagine how cool it would be to have that hung up high above my projection screen and rolled up with a heavy bar/weight on the bottom. Untie a strap and let it open down and it would be covered with the Glowz spray paint for a giant canvas to write 405 on.
Could just take a piece of gypsum board and spray it on that. All I know is that when I sprayed a few coasts on full size sheet of photo paper and showed my daughter she thought it was awesome.
Fog machines are very inexpensive and can be found from party stores to online retailers and a little goes a long way inside a house. Bubble machines are kinda cool too.
Want to get serious about fun and really blow people away, laser projector is the answer. For the price of an expensive handheld or two you can own a laser projector that brings the cool factor up 100 fold. Try one with a little fog in the room and wow. Try one with a little fog in the room and sit in the middle of the receiving end with a card or something held up to sheild eyes from a direct hit and be ready for a surreal in the middle of the action laser trip. I currently own an LK-PD2 that was purchased in GB#3 through Hak and it has built in effects that are awesome. Getting the Quickshow program to create my own shows and stuff this week. The program is expensive but worth every penny once you see how powerful it is. You can get a demo of it to try after submitting your info. to Pangolin. They will give you a "key" to allow you to mess with the program without having a projector. There's also an absolutely fantastic tutorial online broken down into many parts.
I'll add more things as I can think of them if anyone is interested. I am in no way shape or form trying to sell anyone anything. Just sharing some experiences and deals.
Oh yeah Dremel. Highly suggest the 8200-2/28 as it is their most powerful portable and comes with 2 batteries (8200 is the one battery unit). Honestly wish I had 2 of them I like it so much. Have a couple of wired ones as backup but why bother when this one is so good.
Uranium crackled 1" marbles are cool but hard to find.
Recommend a good charger like the intellicharger i2 and i4 as they are MUCH safer than those cheapo ones that come with units and can individually charge a wide variety of different cell types and voltages all at the same time.
Ice cream. I eat ice cream every night
Have lint free clothes around especially when handling any plastic lens as they scratch if you even think about them scratching. Just want to be able to place the lens on something that won't scratch it.
Even if you don't need glasses for seeing close up, those cheap ones you can find everywhere that magnify are great to wear when working on the small stuff that we mess with (hopefully I'm not wrong about that).
K, I'm too tired of typing any more so I'll stop for now.
Some of these things may not seem to directly relate to the "Pman special" but they do relate to the "Pman" Lol
First of all let me say that everyone should really take some time to look through all the stuff that Fasttech offers and I'm not just talking about laser stuff although their 532nm modules are an absolute steel (actually more like brass I think
).Those single white AAA pens are also a tremendous bargain and fantastic gifts for handing out when you show someone your lasers. Can't even begin to telly you easy it is to stun someone by showing them a tiny 532nm that is anywhere from about 30 to 90mw for $8 bucks and it has a star cap. If you ever buy one and don't care about the plastic case, remember that there's 2 tiny magnets in it you can scavenge.
Part of the big deal with them is you will usually get your stuff in 2 weeks and no matter how little it costs, shipping is free. They take paypal which is a big plus in my book.
Will say though that like all the other Chinese places, they are off now until the 7th.
If you live in the US, you can get a 3 pack 3 color lasers from seller
cjy3271788 shipped free and across country in about 4 days for a very good price and they are Pman approved. I just took a look and thought the price had gone up but then realized it was for 2 sets at $25.60. He used to be a different seller that shipped from China but then came to the states and started having them shipped to him in California. For a short time, his supplier tried to hose him over with an inferior product but I caught it and informed him and he got it straightened out and now they are the same ones that I show in my focusing pen tutorial. I've tried many others but his are the most consistent. I mean, hard to beat 6 pens with great output for under $5 each. You use the 532nm as they are (lots of IR), and turn the 650 and 405 units into fully focusable units so you can do the basic burning and balloon popping tricks with them besides for potential lumia kit stuff.
Haven't bought anything from O-like in some time but they have a very inexpensive nice heavy feeling unit that is fully focusable as is that has dramatic output increases by moving up to using a single 10440 with spacer. I'm taking about the 2 units I had bought at $12 each going from about 125mw with 2 AAA alkalines to 215mw! Holy increase in output batman!!!
100mW 650nm red laser pen/ focusable /Pop balloons.
Right now they only show 594 units in stock
Something I bought from Fasttech that I like a lot is the complete set of 8 ceramic screwdrivers (have to purchase individually). They make it easy to adjust stuff like the tiny pots on boards wthout the risk of shorting anything (trust me, I've done it).
Fasttech also sells "dummy cells" for AAA and AA that are the least expensive I have ever seen. They don't call them that though. They call them "Placeholders" and are located in more than one spot as they have black ones and yellow ones. It's too bad they don't sell other ones BUT they sell a wide variety of adapters to make all kinds of different batteries fit the size of other batteries. Do yourself a favor and take a look. It will surprise you how many crazy adapters they have.
The o-rings that I've sent out were also Fasttech items but will say that annoyingly the small 20 pack ones that say they are glow in the dark aren't. They look like they should be but they don't.
Those MXDL lights that lots of people use for builds (especially the longer ones) are cheaper at Fasttech than anywhere else I have seen. They really do make a nice host although I with they didn't come with the clip attached as it always leaves a scrape mark on the unit and the build will look "cleaner" without it on. $3.21 each.
Too many inexpensive flashlights for builds on Fasttech to mention. Suggest having it show lowest to highest price lights and just start looking through them.
If you are looking to see what a spyro is like and just want something to mess with then something like
Hot Mini Projector R&G DJ Disco Light Stage Xmas Party Laser Lighting Show for about $20 is pretty cool from ebay
Always save the extra pieces/parts from builds you do and try to separate stuff into categories. Never know when you will find something that fits on something else or need an obscure part.
There's so much stuff at Harbor freight in pieces/parts that you can start collecting such as spring kits and grommet kits and copper washer kits and rolls of heat shrink tubing and o-rings and 100 packs of razor blades and $1 epoxy etc...
In every car magazine I get there's always coupons for free stuff such as lights and screwdrivers and multimeter's and 20% off coupons etc. Hey, if the stuff is free it's free so why not. I own very expensive top of the line Fluke meters and you would think why would I care about a cheap free meter. Well, each one of my cars gets to carry one. Will say that you need to be very careful using a cheapo meter as switching through the wrong thing could cause the it to blow apart on you so always select what you want to read and then take the reading. DON'T switch the dial while taking a reading for safety sake
They also have a nice little pack of neo magnets (Fasttech has some nice sizes though).
Sorry I keep coming back to Fasttech but there's just too much good stuff I keep thinking of. If you buy the 10 pack of fart bombs DON'T set one off in your own house Lol. I set one off at our shop on a Monday morning in the mens room and everyone that came into the building was complaining about how terrible the sewer smell was while I was laughing so hard on the inside I had to walk away from everyone.
I have lots of other things I could mention for cool projects but I might step on someones toes and I'm not out to make anyone mad that I released a source for something.
There's some really great Lumia stuff to mess with and you should take a look in the laser shows category thread stuff. My friend Len (Hak) sells kits for Lumia stuff and he's a great guy.
Look around you all the time for interesting things for potential laser builds and you never know what you'll find. Every store I go in I keep my eyes open. Have seen some pretty cool off beat lights in places like auto parts stores.
Try to have fun and keep things in perspective. Remember, lasers are NOT a need and it's easy to get carried away with the spending. That's why when things get tight, have little fun projects you can mess with such as spyro or lumia stuff as there's always something else to try. It's good to have a few inexpensive 532nm modules sitting around as they always impress even at relatively low outputs. It never gets old for me seeing even a 25mw greenie beaming in the dark and you can put them in weird things like an altoids box.
405nm are lots of fun if you have a big glow in the dark piece of paper or wall or something. Krylon sells a spray called "Glowz" that is I think about $7 on Amazon that has gotten some not too great reviews but I actually like it a lot. The main complaint I believe is the glow doesn't last long. The glow when a 405nm hits it is really bright at first and then goes away in a descent enough time to make it fun to keep drawing on it with your laser. I've actually been thinking of trying to spray it on a really big piece of "blackout" cloth that I have that I have that I have on standby in case I wanted to throw up a portable white screen somewhere. It's just a white piece of kind of heavy material that you would find at any fabric store. Usually used to block light at a window. I think maybe you attach it (like sew it) to the back of drapes.
I think the piece I have is at least 5 feet wide by 10 feet long. Can't imagine how cool it would be to have that hung up high above my projection screen and rolled up with a heavy bar/weight on the bottom. Untie a strap and let it open down and it would be covered with the Glowz spray paint for a giant canvas to write 405 on.
Could just take a piece of gypsum board and spray it on that. All I know is that when I sprayed a few coasts on full size sheet of photo paper and showed my daughter she thought it was awesome.
Fog machines are very inexpensive and can be found from party stores to online retailers and a little goes a long way inside a house. Bubble machines are kinda cool too.
Want to get serious about fun and really blow people away, laser projector is the answer. For the price of an expensive handheld or two you can own a laser projector that brings the cool factor up 100 fold. Try one with a little fog in the room and wow. Try one with a little fog in the room and sit in the middle of the receiving end with a card or something held up to sheild eyes from a direct hit and be ready for a surreal in the middle of the action laser trip. I currently own an LK-PD2 that was purchased in GB#3 through Hak and it has built in effects that are awesome. Getting the Quickshow program to create my own shows and stuff this week. The program is expensive but worth every penny once you see how powerful it is. You can get a demo of it to try after submitting your info. to Pangolin. They will give you a "key" to allow you to mess with the program without having a projector. There's also an absolutely fantastic tutorial online broken down into many parts.
I'll add more things as I can think of them if anyone is interested. I am in no way shape or form trying to sell anyone anything. Just sharing some experiences and deals.
Oh yeah Dremel. Highly suggest the 8200-2/28 as it is their most powerful portable and comes with 2 batteries (8200 is the one battery unit). Honestly wish I had 2 of them I like it so much. Have a couple of wired ones as backup but why bother when this one is so good.
Uranium crackled 1" marbles are cool but hard to find.
Recommend a good charger like the intellicharger i2 and i4 as they are MUCH safer than those cheapo ones that come with units and can individually charge a wide variety of different cell types and voltages all at the same time.
Ice cream. I eat ice cream every night
Have lint free clothes around especially when handling any plastic lens as they scratch if you even think about them scratching. Just want to be able to place the lens on something that won't scratch it.
Even if you don't need glasses for seeing close up, those cheap ones you can find everywhere that magnify are great to wear when working on the small stuff that we mess with (hopefully I'm not wrong about that).
K, I'm too tired of typing any more so I'll stop for now.
Some of these things may not seem to directly relate to the "Pman special" but they do relate to the "Pman" Lol
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