tone3jaguar
28th June 2010, 19:31
This is an amazing jump in technology. Casio has released a couple of laser projectors that have some 5.6 mm, 445nm blue laser diodes in them. There are 24 of these little suckers in each one of the projectors. Astonishingly each one of these diodes is capable of a reliable 1 watt plus of power. Companies and do it yourself tech geeks are using these diodes to build portable and laboratory lasers with them. You can buy one for $200.00 bucks, no joke. Or you can spend 900 bucks on a projector and build 24 of them yourself if you know how:confused:
These things have to be handled like guns. For some perspective on the power, a presentation style laser pointer can put out about 5 milliwatts. One of these things can put out 200x that amount. 1 watt = 1000 milliwatts. You have to wear protective goggles when ever using something with this much light energy coming out of it. It can blind you faster than a welding arc if the light reflects back into your eye.
I suppose you could use one outside to point at inanimate objects off in the distance without the goggles. But again, you would have to treat it like a gun and not point it at anyone or anything you did not want to hurt. For some more perspective, only about 3 months ago you would pay around 3 thousand dollars for a blue portable laser that was about 1/10th the power that these have. I may get one in the future for the CSETI contact work that I do every once and a while. We will see.
Here are some vids of them, operators are more than likely sporting protective goggles. You have to have goggles made to block this wavelength of light. Dark shades will not cut it.
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These things have to be handled like guns. For some perspective on the power, a presentation style laser pointer can put out about 5 milliwatts. One of these things can put out 200x that amount. 1 watt = 1000 milliwatts. You have to wear protective goggles when ever using something with this much light energy coming out of it. It can blind you faster than a welding arc if the light reflects back into your eye.
I suppose you could use one outside to point at inanimate objects off in the distance without the goggles. But again, you would have to treat it like a gun and not point it at anyone or anything you did not want to hurt. For some more perspective, only about 3 months ago you would pay around 3 thousand dollars for a blue portable laser that was about 1/10th the power that these have. I may get one in the future for the CSETI contact work that I do every once and a while. We will see.
Here are some vids of them, operators are more than likely sporting protective goggles. You have to have goggles made to block this wavelength of light. Dark shades will not cut it.
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