442 nm diodes...

[Zoof]

didn't know they existed..

but they are sold here....
http://www.hb-laser.com/temp/secondhand_0507_en.pdf

400mW multimode....

[allthatwhichis]

Damn... I'd like to see a beam shot of that. I bet it is purdy.

[shawndoe]

I did a price quote from Nachia.

- Blue 445 nm
NDHB510APA (50mW) : US$3,000/each

Pretty steep, though if Laser based TVs take off you may see a drop. Wonder what we could get out of a group buy. The 405nm were quoted just as high so it may be that the price has since, but the production levels of the 445nm is not nearly as high.

Have a good one.
Shawndoe

[allthatwhichis]

Is 3 grand really THAT much for 400mW? What does a 400mW 473nm cost?

edit...

I'm an idiot, I missed the 50mW in that. I thought we were talking bout 400mW... DOH!.

[Dr Laser]

For 442nm you will need 3 times the power then 473nm. More far you go towards UV or IR more power you need to make it visible. Lasershows are all about visibility.

473nm -Blue
532nm-Green
632nm-Red

The holly grail of colors.
Some companies will say "more deep colors"....it's a pure BS!. Again Lasershows are about color visibility!!

473nm.....400mw....hmm 200mw is about $2K I say about 5-7k for 400mw (473nm). Don't forget for 442nm you are getting 400mw/3 = ~150mw.
150mw 473 will cost you ~$1600

[The_Doctor]

Some companies will say "more deep colors"....it's a pure BS!

Not true, though they might use it as an excuse at times.

A 635 nm diode makes a scarlet colour, anything shorter is vermillion verging to orange. If you want a rich crimson or ruby colour, you must go deeper, and you must add the extra power if you want to match beams.

I'm all for vermillion and lime green of DPSS, it's actually a very cool colour pairing, and probably best balanced aesthetically by a longwave blue around 488 nm. These would be highly visible, but they won't ever give you the strong colour gamut that you could get at 420 nm and 660 nm. And you won't get a real ruby light unless you can get some serious raw power at 690 nm.

Would be nice to have a small number of tunable lasers, maybe four, one for deep reds, one for shortwave red through orange and yellow to shortwave green, one for cyan through to shortwave visible blue (before violet), and one for violet and longwave UV, just on the legal limit of visible. That's just one way to go, but it could be one of the most expressive.

[allthatwhichis]

I have to agree. marconi has a picture of a 635 abstract shape next to a 660 of the same shape and there is a world of difference. I don't think I could live with out the deep red. The orangy-red can be gotten from a splash of green in that deep red... I'm all for getting as many colors as possible. I'd love to add a 442 for deep blues, and a 635 and 690 to fill out the reds completely. Pangolin has 6 color channels for some reason, right?

How many colors would be possible with all those wavelengths? Pangolin will give you what... 4 levels per laser, 100, 75, 50, 25, and 0, so 5... 6 lasers, 30 bit color, or just 30 colors.

[dave]

How many colors would be possible with all those wavelengths? Pangolin will give you what... 4 levels per laser, 100, 75, 50, 25, and 0, so 5... 6 lasers, 30 bit color, or just 30 colors.

Pangolins color channels are 8-bit, 256 levels per color. I think you may be confusing the linearity adjustment in the palette setup?

[DZ]

Lasershows are all about visibility.

473nm -Blue
532nm-Green
632nm-Red

The holly grail of colors.
Some companies will say "more deep colors"....it's a pure BS!. Again Lasershows are about color visibility!!

I agree. How many people watching a laser show are going to say, damn, that would be so much better if they were using 660nm red. Though the beam quality of the 660nm from Marconi is much better than most 635nm modules. Which is one reason I still may switch, but for now 635nm is doing great for me.

marconi has a picture of a 635 abstract shape next to a 660 of the same shape and there is a world of difference.

Actually if you are refering to this:
That is my creation and is done with 200mW of 635 an 200mW of 660. Though it looks orange when compaired with 660nm, it is still quite red....


David

[The_Doctor]

There is definitely a difference. You can't judge it by a picture displayed on a monitor though. Monitor reds are too broad, and their lowest wavelength is around 635 nm. Orange light there just means there's green in it.

If you make any red laser bright enough, eyes see it as shorter wave than it is, it's why the bright spot always looks almost orange due to saturation in the eye. The difference is in details and fades, so long as the eye isn't saturated, there IS a difference between the 660 and 635 nm reds regardless of relative power, and you don't need to put them beside each other to see it. On a monitor, we can kid ourselves that fading the red makes a deeper red, but only because it's not actually capable of a wavelength shift at all. A real wavelength difference is a very different effect. If you add the extra power to the longer wavelength to match apparent brightness of the shorter one, we can still sense the extra power, so the effect seems stronger and deeper, just as extending the bass in loudspeakers does even if the volume is equal, because even at equal volume, more air is moved. The analogy isn't physically exact, but the fact we can even analogise it at all proves that our brains process the different kinds of signals in similar ways.