Photos of 125mW Dragonlaser vs 5mW New wish laser (failed experiment)

[diodedealer]

My laser collection is now a 125mW laser pointer from www.dragonlasers.com and a 5mW laser pointer from www.newwishlaser.com I have a red laser pointer key ring set but that is so lame it does not count.

The 125mW is new and the pride and joy of my collection. The 5mW is an old companion of mine.

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o209/Luvlasers/IMG_1056.jpg

This photo is the 5mW. I'm using it to reflect the beam of 3 mirrors and land on the balloon. The 5mW is so low in power that it can't pop the balloon. It is just to align the mirrors.

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o209/Luvlasers/IMG_1058.jpg

This one is the 125mW. The idea was to get the 125mW to burst the balloon. Complete failure. The balloon will normally burst instantly. Nothing happened with the mirrors.

The 125mW can pop balloons at over 10 meters (have not tried longer) so power is not a problem. Probably the reflective quality of the mirrors is too poor.

Hard to find good mirrors these days :mad:

Interesting to compare the brightness of the 125mW to the 5mW.

Despite the expense, i am so never going back to lower powers.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Don't take photos of high powered lasers on polished floors, the reflection is blinding:wow:

[infinity532]

The discs out of hard drives are a perfect mirror. Be very careful not to touch the surface, and use only microfiber if you absolutely must wipe it for some reason. ...comes out of the drive perfectly clean.:cool:

[infinity532]

No problem. Did you try it? Amazing how the most useful things that are right under our noses go unnoticed isn't it? I have a 200mW 532 pointer...pretty bright. Another thing that may prevent your laser from popping the balloon is beam divergence. The farther away from you the dot is, the bigger it gets and because the beam is spread out. When you are bouncing off mirrors you have a tiny bit of loss too and the total distance between mirrors reduces the power at the target. The best way to offset this would be to devise a way to focus the beam to a pin point on your target, because they are focused to infinity at the factory. Also, you could maybe decrease the distance between mirrors. Also, try drawing a dot on your balloon with an black permanent marker. The black absorbs the light and heat much better. Let me know how it goes. :cool: