Greetings with lasers.

Introduce Yourself
1

Hi BLF,

I believe I haven’t formally introduced myself yet.
I’m Ryan and currently live in Seoul, Korea. Not sure how my craving for flashlights have started, but I’m addicted to gadgets that deal with photons: flashlights, photography, and lasers.

I own a couple flashlights, and my largest one is the Trustfire X6. Pretty nice package, I’d say.

I also own an Accucell-6 hobby charger to work with li-ions, and I’m tinkering it for a connection with a computer to generate charge/discharge graphs.

Finally, I own two class IV lasers, both of which are 445nm (blue).

My “fancier” of the two is this:

It’s driven at 1.8A, but since I don’t own a power meter, I’m not too sure of the output.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

Thanks for the great experience here. (Much nicer than CPF.)

2

Did you put those lights together yourself, or are you able to buy them like that in South Korea? I believe 5 ma is the limit in the USA for complete lights, but that higher powered components can be purchased separately.

3

I had to build it together myself—the flashlight body, laser diode, heatsink, driver, lens, etc.

I sent the host to a machinist in the US and he made the great heatsink for me. I just had to assemble the parts.

I believe laser laws are even more strict here. Rarely do we find green lasers, even for presentations <5mW.

4

Welcome Ryansoh3! That's a cool looking laser. I think I need to start playing with those next.

5

Cool laser…

6

A belated welcome, ryansoh. I'm not really into lasers, but that is a very cool looking one.

7

Those look great! I am scared to ask, but how much would it cost to build a decent laser?

8

Depends on how high output power you’d want.
1W (continuous) would set you back $500 or more, while 50mW (which is bright enough for most uses, esp. if it’s green beam) can be built for less than $100.

9

Thanks Match! Just like flashlights, lasers are pretty addicting, although they won’t be much of daily use. :slight_smile:

Thanks guys, appreciate it. The GITD o-rings do make it very unique.

The price depends highly on the color and the output of the laser, but the one shown above set me back about $145 to build.
($45 for the blue laser diode, $10 for the red flashlight host, $50 for the heatsink machining, $30 for the lens, $5 for the driver, $5 for the GITD o-rings)
It outputs just over 2 Watts, more close to 2.3W, but I haven’t metered it yet.

If you buy one already built, you can get a similar build for about $250, but without all the hassle. I also bought this one for $250:

The heatsink is pure copper, so the laser is very stable, but makes it very heavy.

Cheers!

10

Indeed cool!

11

pm’d! I’d love to learn more about building a similar laser!

12

13

Thanks bud! :slight_smile:

Yup, just replied. Feel free to ask me any other questions!

Haha, thanks!