Looking for highest power visible light laser diode with lowest divergence.

[Laser57]

Looking to buy 100 pcs low divergence laser diodes at a few hundred mw output power, anyone have some or know where to buy? They can be any visible wavelength but better between red and blue from 638 to 445nm.



I've been trying to educate myself in regard to the available laser diodes with a few hundred milliwatts of raw power output in the visible light range which have very low divergence. I can find interesting candidates with low prices on ebay, but then try to confirm the divergence, that's another deal. There is so much spoken about in the forums regarding different devices but most threads don't even touch upon their divergence, exasperating trying to get the info. Is there someone here who can recommend a low divergence, a few hundred mw, cheap laser diode at any visible wavelength? Looking for something with divergences approaching 10 degrees or less in each plane, 4/10 degrees would be awesome at a few hundred mw and cheap, but not to be found, it appears.

[kecked]

optnext 170mw 638nm very nice

tightest beam is single mode 80mw 450nm divergence is so good it seems like there is none.

[Laser57]

Nice Optnext diode but wow, the price is ten times higher than what I wanted on ebay. I might buy one to play with though, thanks Minimum divergence is 5/13 which is great.

I'm also looking at the PL450B 80mw diode too, was hoping to find low divergence red I can afford to buy a large lot of too.

Edit: I found far more reasonable prices for the Optnext 638nm diode on DTR's google laser shop site, bought one there to try out, much appreciate the help.

[kecked]

try the 660nm laser diodes. They are 10.00 at about 250mw. but only look as bright as a 35mw 638nm.

[Laser57]

I am more attracted to the 638nm diodes but they sure are more expensive than the 660nm units. The Opnext 5/13 min degree 170mw diodes are high priced at 65 dollars plus on ebay, but the Opnext 5/13 min. deg. 120mw diodes can be purchased in quantity for 20 dollars each. I will probably buy a lot of the 120mw units at that price.

[tribble]

I don't know if anyone has done the study, but I would NOT expect to find very many samples with the minimum divergence. Take those spec sheets with a grain of salt. There's a reason the spread between the min and max is about 100%. E.G., for the 63133, the min is 5/13 and the max is 13/23. Probably any given sample will fall in the middle somewhere, but you might get really lucky, or you might get really UNlucky. That's the normal distribution for ya.

Of course, you could buy a lot of 1000, test them all, collect all the ones that are 5/13 or better, and sell those at a premium to cover the cost of the lot.

[Laser57]

Wish I was in good enough financial shape to bin out the best ones out of that large of a lot. Yes, I didn't really expect to find many which met the minimums and I've been thinking about that, wondering if they could be purchased for extra cost that way somewhere, I'm not holding my fingers crossed on that idea.

[kecked]

any reason you are not just using a beam expander?