Recent content by steveclv

Silly boy!! I simply stated that Class 4 handheld lasers are incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. And so are firearms. I did not equate the 2 as being equally dangerous. Just that are both dangerous. Read what is written, not what you want it to read.

Hand held lasers will be banned at some point The only question will be whether they are >1mW or >5mW They are incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands, just like firearms and look at how those are now regulated despite being a constitutional right. The aircraft incidents get the headlines but...

Most nightvision scopes have IR illumination but not a collimated beam (laser). With suitable lenses, I guess that an IR diode could be adapted but non-visible lasers are incredibly dangerous simply because you can't see the beam/dot and so you need a lot of safety precautions in place before...

One of the answers is that the cheap diodes in the cheap lasers are overdriven. By using good heatsink you can overdrive a diode to produce more output than it was intended for. So a 500mW diode can be pushed to 1W or even higher but the build quality, heat sink etc needs to be good. If you...

Nice article Give a laser as much respect as you give a hand gun. Remember also that most of the cheaper plastic goggles that hobbyists have can be easily degraded after a direct hit and should be discarded if they have been hit. They are cheap enough so it's not worth taking a chance.

I think I can understand what you mean and I assume English isn't your first language, but you are mistaken. At >900mW it matters not what the wavelength is because any laser light produced from a modern diode will blind you faster than you can blink. Secondly, safety glasses will not protect...

LaserSaber: A real 'Star Wars' lightsaber at last? | Crave - CNET This is WRONG on so many levels, I don't know where to start. Hey kiddies, buy a real light saber and blind your friends and pets :yabbmad: Wicked Lasers have built a polycarbonate addon to their laser which turns it into a...

We normally measure laser light by it's wavelength but I wonder whether it can even generate a full wavelength at that speed? Anyone got a calculator :)

Re: FS AwesomeLasers Cobalt 2000 + safety goggles The LaserBee is "SOLD" pending middleman approval Offers being accepted on the Cobalt 2000 + 2 pair of goggles

Ha ha Yes, you are probably right ;)

I'm not 100% sure that it's the idiots 'fault'... let me explain... You go to school and your teacher uses a pointer on the whiteboard. That's cool. You go to a friends house and they are playing with their cat/dog with a laser pointer - you have great fun for an hour winding the animal up...

Heat is drawn from hot to cold - so this would depend upon how much heat is being generated by the 'overdriven' diode - I suspect they get pretty freakin hot!!

Of course it does and will. Unless you can come up with a genuine argument for why they should not be banned, eventually they will be. Unlike gun ownership, there is no huge, powerful lobby (NRA) fighting to preserve the right to own a 2W laser. There is no counter-argument for why we should be...

Yes - how about inverse 3 times LOL The biggest problem is that for most of us, knowing the alloy for what we can purchase 'over the counter' is very hard. For example we have no idea what alloy is used for the host body. And yes, as you say, it can make a huge difference to the effectiveness...

Every material has a Thermal Transfer Coefficient that determines how quickly heat moves through it - copper (398) is almost twice as good aluminum (237) for this. The molar heat capacity of copper and aluminum is the same but copper has 3 times the specific heat capacity of aluminum which...