Anyone famaliar with CNI driver board?

[Things]

Hi, i have a CNI laser that i supposed to be >100mw, though upon compaing it to my supposed 40mw module, it isnt much brighter at all!




The top is the "100mw" and the bottom is 40mw. The dull dot on the side is from the 40mw's bounce mirror, even with that loss, and the loss on the galvo's its still comparable!

Since this laser is sooooo bulky, and is even TEC cooled, and doesnt even get warm after like 30 mins of use, I was wondering if anyone knew what each pot on the driver board is for? This is the board I am talking about:



If I have such a bulky laser i'd prefer if it actually was powerful

EDIT: My driver board has 4 pots, just posted a high res pic of it.

Cheers

[p1t8ull]

You can't really compare lasers and estimate power like that, for a start there isn't a massive difference between 40 and 100mW, and looking at dots up close just saturates vision, even at those power levels.

You really need a power meter and use either a IR filter, dichro or dichroic mirror to filter out any IR to know how much actual 532nm you have pouring out of each laser

[Things]

Well apparently its supposed to go up to about 140mw after half an hour, which should be about 3 times as bright!

I also tried a beam comparison and the difference still isnt that great :/

[dave]

The problem is 3 times power does not equal 3 times as bright, as the eyes response to brightness is not linear..

[Things]

Hmm interesting. I was just kinda confused that the 40mw seemed almost as bright as it

[gottaluvlasers]

rule of thumb-

double the brightness= 4X the power. (usually)

40mW next to 100mW is probably going to look almost identical.

500mW next to 1 Watt is almost impossible to see the difference.

-Marc

[Lasermad]

That explains why 2 watt next to 1 watt looks pretty similiar then , except maybe a slight increase in brightness of the visable beam ...so the ideal upgrade path for to feel your getting visable value for money is


200mw ............
1 watt .......
5 watt .....
? sell your house and your wifes body

[Things]

Thats pretty much how this is, there is a difference in the beam, and a slight difference in the dot. Kinda strange how you need such jumps for power increase

[Onge]

I know in music via a PA system, once you get to a certain decibel level you need 7 times the power to make a 1 decibel level increase.

Onge