Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

This company sells a laser pointer that can burn through cardboard and ignite fireworks fuses and matches.

Laserglow - Hercules High Powered Green Laser

Technically, Laserglow’s “Hercules” lasers are “handheld lasers”, not “laser pointers”. It’s least powerful model, the US$989 Hercules-250, is listed with 0.250 to 0.274 W output, similar to a typical DVD burner’s. The most powerful, the $2989 Herules-400, has nearly double that, 0.4 to 0.45 W. All of them are 4.5 V, from 3 D cell batteries, the same as a large flashlight.

They look to me like nicely made, useful products, but a bit pricey for many hobbyists. A much lower cost do-it-yourself alternative is to scavenge the laser diode from an old DVD burner, and wire it into a flashlight body. The webpage has instructions for doing this using a mini-maglight, which holds two 1.5 V AAA batteries.

I think it’s a good idea not to refer to handheld lasers with more than 0.005 W output as “laser pointers”, since most of us have an intuitive grasp of the safety of these lasers which is dangerously inappropriate if applied to one 50 times more powerful.

Having a defunct (still sorta works, but writes barely readable disks) DVD writer on hand, I’m thinking of seeing if I can cobble a laser burner tool out of it. Not that I need such a tool, but having one, I might find it handy. The ability to etch neat, curving lines, or cut small plastic parts, seems a pretty good one to have.