I finally got the laser in this afternoon, after being RMA'd once due to the module being underpowered (max. at 320mw). I'm not too good at reviews, and I may make a cleaner one on my site later, but I've been waiting too long to do this. All of the pictures except the last two use no special enhancements; no smoke, haze or photoshopping. So, here we go:
Here is the module and powersupply, in all of their glory:
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...l/portrait.jpg
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...small/side.jpg
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...mall/front.jpg
Upon firing it up, I knew it was performing much better than last time. You tend to notice a difference in 700mw... So I whipped out my trusty Lasercheck. Now, mind you, the Lasercheck's limit is 1000mw. Once it hits that limit, its supposed to beep, so I was hoping to hear it scream like a newborn baby. At first, I was a bit worried. About 500mw. Then I noticed something... I had partially missed the lens of the lasercheck, and had started to melt the plastic casing. Oops.
So I tried again. And the baby started crying! See the tears?
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...ll/readmax.jpg
And just so you guys don't think I'm shaming you by glitching out the screen, here's me after holding the Lasercheck in the beam for appx. one second:
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...ll/readlow.jpg
I didn't have any matches or balloons, sorry guys. However, I have a video of some electric tape and one of my poor goggle cases being destroyed by the laser. I'll post it tomorrow.
I'm pretty stoked right now; everything seems to be going well. Time to check the divergence:
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...ll/distant.jpg
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog.../small/dot.jpg
Aaaah crap. THERE'S the catch. Notice in the second picture how there is a dot that looks like a lens flare? Well it's not. Oh well, I can clean the lens, or at very least I can block it out when I mount it in my projector. But that's not the worst part. You can sort of tell from the pictures, but in real life, it is VERY obvious that this divergence is wider than... (insert your favorite momma joke here). It's SUPPOSED to be <1.5mRad, and I just knew that wasn't the case.
So I did the measurements. The pictures show the laser at only 41 feet, which isn't good for measuring divergence, so I moved it back to 69 feet (21.0312 m). I used calipers to decern that the beam width is 2.8mm, and the dot is 86.93mm. Doing the math (and please correct me if I'm wrong) this comes out to about 4.15 mRad. OUCH! I can't have this if I'm putting this in a professional projector!
Anyway, I'm calling the company on monday (they forgot to send my TTL input plug too, so I can't hook it up to the scanner yet), but perhaps there is something I can do with the module to fix this. Otherwise, I better start shopping for optics.
BTW, here's two pics of the same thing: the laser with the hazer running. One is with flash, one is without. I still can't believe you can see the laser as well as you can with flash.
Flash:
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...l/fogflash.jpg
No flash:
http://www.skyfirelasers.com/boomdog...fognoflash.jpg
The brightness of this laser is uncomparable to any I have personally seen, and Aixiz has been relatively honest with me every step of the way... albeit VERY slow and a bit unreliable (they sent my original package express, 5 days, when it was supposed to be shipped overnight too). But the divergence is a serious issue that I hope can be resolved soon, as well as getting a TTL hookup they didn't put inside it (thus I can't hook it up to my scanner). I plan to being mounting this up in the projector casing shortly, so with any luck I will have a running projector in a matter of weeks. It's just becoming frustrating, considering I might have to return it a second time. Does anyone know if the discs in the front rotate to adjust the divergence? I don't want to touch them until I hear from the manufacturer. All I know is that this stupid debacle is wasting the few precious months I have to build my projector at the machine shop before I go back to school, and I'm really not satisfied with Aixiz at all at this point.
