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I have also smoked a lens which burned up my diode.
If lasers keep getting more powerful, burning glass optics could become a problem soon. I've had that happen to me with very fine > 5W beams.
My experience was either at 532 nm or 1064 nm (if it was IR then it was an even larger power). The beam was very fine too, so the power densities were pretty high. Even then it only caused a small surface burn that cut down on ~30% of the light transmission. We just moved the laser beam a little to the side, to go through a part where it was still undamaged, and everything worked again.
twhite828: It was not my job to choose the optics, but I imagine they were reasonable. I do not think rare instances of superficial optical damage are unheard of in a large, complicated, high power system. I was merely trying to contribute by saying that it may become a factor in hobbyist laser devices if powers continue to increase.
If my 445 laser is running at 600mA with the stock acrylic, will it be destroyed or should it be okay?