What's the maximum power of the a laser pointer?

[paul1598419]

How are you confirming the 5nm difference? And, though the manufacturer claims the narrowest bandwidth to be 17nm, you claim a 90% at 5nm, but don't provide proof of this. I hope you are successful at doing this, but my knowledge has me dubious of your ability to succeed.

 

[Benm]

It would seem very difficult to achieve this in practical application.

First of all you'd have to cherry pick the laser diodes to be on the far ends of the normal output wavelength, possibly finding only a percent or so of total production suitable at all. You could perhaps get these as rejects from a manufacturer because they are so far off the intended wavelength, though i doubt that'd be easy.

Then you could use the dichro + PBS approach to combine the beams of 4 into one.

One problem would be cooling though, for something like 25 watts optical output you're looking at 100 watts or so dissipation, not easy to get rid off in anything 'handheld' keeping the temperature low enough to actually hold with without burning your hands.

I wonder what you'd do with a laser that powerful in any case - 5 watts already is a crazy amount of power for a handheld laser. It's obviously enough to blind instantly, but also at the point where it will actually start setting stuff on fire quite quickly. Heck, i have a nasty burn in my wallpaper from just 1 watt, figuring the white wallpaper would reflect enough of it not to char (guessed wrong there).

 

[hakzaw1]

The max of a pointer is 5mW more is overkill in classroom-for star pointer a green 5 mW is enough.

The site in French is NOT real JETLASERS.. so buy at your own risk from them..

 

[RedCowboy]

<5mw........ Yes what he said. ^^^^^

 

[Benm]

If you mean like a pointer for a presentation, performed with people not wearing protective eyewear, sure.

If you mean what a handheld laser could output, see the rest of the responses

 

[hakzaw1]

I agree BUT
these was a time when NO pointers were very powerful-- calling a 7W portable a 'pointer' can be misleading--
I call the 2X aaa style 'pen-pointers' the rest I call portables or handhelds..but that is just me..

hak

 

[Benm]

Yeah, i get your point, but i guess this is a now called a laser pointer forum and (also) discusses handheld devices that'd burn your average whiteboard or flipsheet.

I'm not really sure where to put a limit between the two either, you have plenty of 2-aaa-powered lasers that output pretty dangerous amount of light (couple of hundred mW are far from impossible).

I usually refer to the things <5 mW or so as 'presentation pointers' as that would be a suitable use. Downside is that pretty dangerously powerful green lasers were sold as such over time, some very temperature sensitive so it'd be a few mW at 20 degrees but tens of mW at 30 or 40 (or the other way around).