Welcome to hypography, beamq. I look forward to reading about your laser exploits, and any other sci/tech stuff that you’re into.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Moontanman
… what's the most powerful laser pointer, power wise and wavelength, you can buy? Can you get one that can ignite flammable materials?
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We ought to take this to a
science projects or
engineering thread to get into the details, but in short, in the US, laser pointers can’t legally have more than 0.005 W output. Even adding some optics, I don’t think any hobbyist work could make that burn or ignite common materials.
A typical DVD burner has about 0.245 W output. Various folk have extracted the diode laser from them and built little handheld lasers that can burn stuff using 3 V DC power or so, which you can get from a pair or more of ordinary 1.5 V batteries (AA, AAA, etc).
Obviously, you wouldn’t want to use such a thing to point at a whiteboard or play with your cats.
Seriously, you don’t want to play at all with a laser of that power, but follow laser lab safety protocols – such lasers can blind you.
Moderation note: Replies to this post have been from this introduction thread to the engineering thread “Powerful handheld lasers”
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Moderator: Computers and Technology; Medical Science; Science Projects and Homework; Philosophy of Science; Physics and Mathematics; Environmental Studies
Welcome, beamq
