WLASER 50mW Handheld: Ehh.

[Cyparagon]

I'm going with mister Guin on this one. It's a pointer, and as such, it will not be on long enough to run into heat problems. The brass in there should be enough to sustain operation for the duty cycle.

Yes, it might lengthen the appropriate duty cycle to have contact with the case, but not by too much. And if most people have it on no longer than a few seconds, where is the need? As long as you leave it on for no more than a minute or so, there's no reason it wouldn't last just as long as a pointer that had a 10kg heat sink with fins. If you want to run your laser for twenty minutes straight, don't buy a pointer.

 

[sandidgepatrick]

it has plenty of heat dissipation 50mw!!!!!! you right Cyparagon!!!

 

[brtaman]

it has plenty of heat dissipation 50mw!!!!!! you right Cyparagon!!!

Well, the pointer is not running at 100% efficiency...the actual pump diode is in the 500mw range. Also it is not running at 100% efficiency. So in the end you are looking a quite a bit over 500mw (1.8v X ~700mA-1A Pin) in terms of heat dissipation into the 10g?'s of brass?

(Yesterday was a wild night and my head is still buzzing, if anyone wants to do the actual calculations and weigh the module please go right ahead)

I am not trying to disagree with you guys (cyp/daguin), the module itself is certainly adequate, my point is that, while the pointers do indeed work and manage to create quite decent power for the money. They are engineered on the "bare minimum" side of things. And if anyone wants to comment that they are so cheap it shouldn't matter...I seem to remember some extremely decently built and heatsinked romisen hosts, which were quite popular in the past. Personally, I don't see a reason to settle for a product whose quality in the engineering sense isn't as good as should/could have been.

I like to shine a laser for decent time periods and not short bursts.

 

[Pontiacg5]

That's pretty much my point, there is room there for a lot of heatsinking but it was not used. It would have been really easy to fill that void with some kind of metal and that would have made the laser preform a lot better (as far as duty cycle.)

If the people who made this laser are that cheap (aluminum is pretty cheap, a ring that size would probably cost $0.20.) Then they probably skimped somewhere else too. That right there is just a sign that this laser is cheap to me.