Anybody that knows me and my history with laser projectors will know that I am living proof of the fact that green is unlucky. With the exception of my Laserscope, I have never owned what I would call a really good green. They have either had horrible beams, slow modulation, temperature problems, loose optics, you name it, I have sent a laser back for it. Some came back working very nicely, and others were not so lucky. I have had CNI, Viasho, Lamda, Lasever and Laserwave and they all gave me massive headaches.
My latest, rather ambitious project was to build 3 identical 5 watt RGB's to a very high standard. This all went very well until it came to the green modules. I started with 2 x CNI and 1 Laserwave all rated at 1 watt, but the Laserwave outperformed the CNI's by a country mile in modulation speed. So on their own, the CNI's were ok, but with the Laserwave in the third projector, the colours were a mile out across the three systems. I then had 3 of the Laserwave OEM's, but these had vast differences in performance and beam quality.
I ended up getting in touch with Bridge, explaining my predicament and what I was trying to achieve. Bridge was amazingly helpful and we struck up a deal. I returned my 3 OEM's to Laserwave, paid the cost difference plus a little extra to have three matching OEM V-S lasers made special for me. He gave me Eric Cheung as a point of contact, and throughout the whole transaction, Eric was absolutely brilliant. He maintained regular contact, kept tabs on what was going on, updating me every step of the way. Once the lasers were built, Eric sent me photo's of the test results before shipping.
The lasers arrived safe and sound in a well packed box. I already had the PSU's from the OEM's which is why you don't see any in the box in the pic.
All three modules were making pretty much the same power. According to my Coherent meter, they were making 1.5 watts give or take a few milliwatts. Most importantly, the difference in power across the three modules was no more than 30 milliwatts.
I fired the lasers about 15 Mtrs up my garden and all three had a very round spot, pretty much all of the power was concentrated in the middle of the beam and all beams show roughly 1 Mrad divergence and around 3mm diameter. Once again, all three were visually the same. There was no visible mode hopping or changes in the beam quality over time, so they seemed pretty stable.
Now I have them in the projectors and so far, they seem very stable. There is a very slight difference in modulation rise and fall times, but it is *very* slight. The only noticeable difference is with deep orange colours where one is slightly different to the the other two. But that can be tuned out with colour palette's. Other than that tiny little difference, the modulation is very smooth on these lasers. Green only effects look smooth and silky, fades are smooth and colour gradients look amazing.
So all in all I am very pleased with the quality of these modules, communication and service I received from Bridge, Eric and Laserwave as a whole.
Soon as I get chance, I will post video and pics of these beauties in action.
Suffice to say, I thoroughly recommend these lasers, best DPSS I have seen.
Cheers
Mark