Professional 50mW green laser for <50 Euro

Post by **MindBender** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:53 pm

Even though I don't have any practical applications for it besides 'playing', I've bought myself a nice professional 50mw 532nm semiconductor laser:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0236882131
This guy has 45 more of them and they will cost less than 50 Euro a piece, including shipping.

As you may know, the human eye is much more sensitive to green light than it is to red light. That, and the 50mW it outputs, make the spot and even the beam clearly visible. Your average red laser pointer doesn't output much more than 0.5mW (regardless of what the box boasts).

Post by **Jfn** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:11 pm

Be careful on how you use these units: http://www.nvs-straling.nl/wetens/nis/a ... tikel9.asp (Dutch only)

Als het niet gerepareerd kan worden dan is het niet kapot!

Post by **MindBender** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:32 am

It's not a laser pointer; It's an industrial component (even though I can't think of an application for them quickly) so this law doesn't apply to it. These are DPSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DPSS) lasers, so I think they're not accurate enough for interometry.

Anyway, JFNs warning stands. Personally I have a wide experience with lasers, up to high power discrete YAG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAG) lasers. If you just want to play, and hence don't know what you are doing, please stay away from everything about 1mW.