opticalc said:
from what I read previously, the IR that leaked out wasnt as nearly as narrow/lowDispersion a beam that the green output was...
Can someone confirm/deny that?
Yes, i can confirm this..
The IR isn't collimated, when it enters the crystal. After the crystals, there is an expander lense, and then a collimator lense.. The expander lense blocks some IR and expands the rest. The collimator collimates some IR, but mostly the green, as it is much narrower.
If i use my camera to look at the output of the collimator lense, i see a green beam and a lot of white around (IR). But when the head is also on, the simple fact, that it has a narrow apperture blocks most of the IR.
At the head, i only see green and no IR.. There is still some left, but most is gone and the green completelly overpowers it.
So these lasers don't have IR filters, but very little comes out of them, because of the way, they are built.
It's a good solution, IMHO..
So in this case, the IR really does spread like from a flashlight... And they can't rely on IR for burning power, since hardly any is collimated.
The DX200 only put out 20-30mW of IR because of this.. And i'm pretty sure the "True" ones also don't have filters.. People just think they do, because of very little measured IR.
If the collimator was at the top of the aperture, this would be a different story tho.. The IR diode in my DX200 smoked a floppy without even being collimated, when i removed everything else.