{"id":2701,"date":"2015-08-26T15:18:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T15:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/?p=2701"},"modified":"2015-08-26T15:18:29","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T15:18:29","slug":"cheap-laser-pointers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/cheap-laser-pointers\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheap Laser Pointers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/photo11.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/photo11.jpg\" alt=\"photo(1)\" width=\"1632\" height=\"1224\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2702\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I picked up some of these cheap laser pointer in Shenzhen, then proceeded to order a bunch more on eBay, they&#8217;re about 5USD each shipped. The purple laser shown above had no mW rating. But they generally claim to be 1 or 5mW. I hooked a purple laser up to a PSU and it drew about 170mA, 500mW. I&#8217;d guess these lasers are actually much more powerful than 5mW, they certainly look it.<\/p>\n<p>By adjusting the collimating lens so it would focus on a smaller spot, the laser would even burn through plastic:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/photo21.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/photo21.jpg\" alt=\"photo(2)\" width=\"1017\" height=\"977\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2704\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;d guess a few hundred mW. It&#8217;s not really possible to non-destructively disassembly the pointer, but I sacrificed one. Here&#8217;s the PCB.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/photo4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/photo4.jpg\" alt=\"photo\" width=\"3264\" height=\"2448\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2703\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t find a good dataset for the 5152M, but it appears to be a boost converter. The voltage at the diode is around 7V, but I&#8217;d expect the laser to be driven in constant current mode, and I guess the boost maybe operating in this configuration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up some of these cheap laser pointer in Shenzhen, then proceeded to order a bunch more on eBay, they&#8217;re about 5USD each shipped. The purple laser shown above had no mW rating. But they generally claim to be 1 or 5mW. I hooked a purple laser up to a PSU and it drew [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RRoU-Hz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2705,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701\/revisions\/2705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}