Question about MW's on diffrent lasers

[Kaspar389]

I have a few questions on mw on diffrent colored lasers.

When I first got here, 250mw red was good, then I see people pot modding, to get from 5mw green to like 10mw.

Well whats the point? It still wont burn anything, right? Cause I thought only about like....80mw you can burn.

Then, people are getting 30mw ir lasers, that are burning like crazy.

Can someone explain, thanks/

 

[Ashton]

I've never seen a 30mw IR burner. However, some substances will probably burn better at lwoer pwoer with IR because it behaves differently to normal light. Yes, normally 75mw concentrated in the minimum usually (though I'm told somone was burnign stuff with a 55mw, dont know how true that is, though with proper culmination I suppose it's possible)

You want to increase the pwoer of a red so it can be mroe visible, or jsut for the experiance so when you get a greenie you will be ready to mod it higher so it's more visible or burns better.

250mw of red is still good, some of us havn't even hit that mark yet (my highest red is >200mw, suppsoedly around 210) though a lot of us are getting 400mw near-IR lasers from pseudo to burn like mad!

 

[styropyro]

I think you are confusing the 30 mW burning infrared lasers with 30 WATT infrared lasers, because 30mW should only do minor burning and thats when it's focused to a point.

 

[Kaspar389]

Yeah, 30 WATT i think.

But what about greens.

Greens are like..100mw and are considered beasts, and can burn as well as a 240mw red.

 

[Gazoo]

No that's not true. A 240mw red will run circles around a 100mw green, but green will be much brighter. I think maybe you are getting mw's and ma's mixed up maybe??

 

[Ashton]

I think it's the mw vs visiblity. Also you have to consider the avalibility + cost. IF you discount the DX lasers, you cant get above *maybe* 50mw greenie for $100 probably more. Also, AFAIK, outside of industrial entertainment lasers, the most powerful greenie on teh market is the Herc, which tops out at 500 or 600mw. I've seen reds up in the multi-watt range (though granted not many, usually when you go up there you start looking at IR because they're being used for industrial processing)

Also keep in mind a greeni is 4x brighter than a red. So my 200mw red, which is visible at night, will be equaled by a greenie of 1/4 it's power (200 / 4 = 50) a 50mw greenie will be as bright or mroe than my 200mw red, but that's because the human eye sees green best, then blue (at night) and red least (of the trio, of course, there are otehr colors that are seen better/worse than red and blue, but green is the most visible color of the spectrum)

 

[pseudonomen137]

mWs are power. Not a direct, but a close correlation to burning power.

wavelength is color.

The combo of the two determines price (well its much more complex than that, but you get the idea). There are also many advantages to these lasers in the way they are made. You can lump most reds together as single-mode diodes, whereas a 30W IR array is a bunch of multi-mode emitters side by side, and green is a crystal pumped by a diode. These, first and foremost, affect price, but also affect what the laser can be used for.

With each and every laser being quite different, and the uses extending from lasershows, to DVD burning, to medical, to pretty much every field of technology there is, you can't just take a single attribute like mW or color and say that it defines the laser.

What's the point of a 10mW green laser versus a 5mW? There are nearly infinitely many. Saying that because 10mW still won't burn makes it pointless is to say that the only use humans have ever found for a laser is to pop balloons.