A plea for safety, pl edition.

[mixedgas]

This is not extrapolation. At the time, if you could not justify your need for a 2500$ sample, you needed to buy a complete assembly from one of the factory approved US VARS. Value added resellers. I know, I tried almost two years ago to get a corporate sample, at my former employer.

VAR means buying a expensive complete assembly with lenses etc, not the raw diode.

So the VARs could possibly not be so happy about loosing their probable exclusive sales agreements, when the market was flooded?

Steve

[lasersbee]

When C$@#o first manufactured the Projectors I'm sure they had no idea
that some intelligent folks would strip a Brand New $1000.00 product to
access 24 small parts inside. It was just not foreseen by C#%$o...

I has been reported that lately the LDs are epoxied in place with some black
material to make them more difficult to remove... I personally haven't
seen what it looks like. So it seems they are making an effort to curb the
WL type issues...


Jerry

[White-Light]

I don't have a lot of real firsthand knowledge about how Nichia conducts their business, but I always thought that the reason Nichia and other manufacturers charge so much for single diodes (which Nichia only sells as "engineering samples" from what I've seen) is to ensure that the people buying the samples are serious about their work, not just some guy on the street. Electronics designers who are serious, competent and who work for established companies are more likely to develop products that require thousands of diodes once mass-production begins which are then sold for peanuts compared to the price of the samples. I don't think that profit margin is their primary concern with singles, but I could be wrong.

In order for a manufacturer to include 24 class 4 445nm diodes in a projector that costs less than a grand the individual cost per diode would have to be quite small.

To my mind Nichia must have done the maths and decided that targetting mass sales to projector manufacturers at say $10 each was better than making small scale sales at $2,500 each, especially given that if they gained industry wide usage for that purpose and possibly laser tv's in the future, sales could only climb. With that in mind, I can't fail to see how they wouldn't have realised that in doing so, 3rd parties would either approach the manufacturers for an alternative source of supply or failing that reverse engineer the products to get their hands on them. After all no-one is going to pay $2,500 for an item that being sold to others for eg $10. So to my mind this must have been a marketing decision with the implication of harvesting or 3rd party sales being an inevitable consequence, even if unwanted. That being the case, I can't see how they can complain. Surely it must have been financially viable for them to take the mass market route with a hit in individual sales, otherwise they wouldn't have taken it. Equally, although not desired harveting surely has pushed sales of cinema projectors up and thus further orders from Casio.

I think the real problem here is more likely to be one of image with laser pointers being involved as the companies concerned probably don't want to be associated with any adverse incident that might occur eg. Air Crash, Blinding in a club or the street etc. Had these just been laser projector harvests, I doubt there would have been what appear to be attempts to make removal more difficult.

As to the latest attempt, I doubt there's anything that cannot be worked around, although for legal reasons I wouldn't encourage it.

[LaNeK779]

i think you pinned it 100% there lad!! the finance/strategy/marketing guys sure did their homework beforehand. harvested parts can't be over 0.1% of the total production

the only thing we can all do is encourage knowledge and education for correct and safe usage and that's about it

[masterpj]

hmm they should make a kind of rule that high powered (for example 1W or around)
and lower then a specified standard price, you need to have obtain a license to buy.
if they pass a specific price range then you don't need a license.


In this way people who know what they are doing (I hope) can still take advantage of the offer, and people who think of starting will have to pay a higher price if they want that wattage, obtain a license or go for a lower wattage.

Still not much of a rule though.

[masterpj]

What an dangerous asshole
(Sorry for my language there)

I just mailed him to remove that video, else we can all flag him with the as doing dangerous acts, now the last thing I want to do is flagging people.
I dislike flagging a lot.

But first of all the idea of trying to safe up on safety and therefore massively increasing risks and dangers makes me sick.

60$ isn't much when it comes down of being able to still see or not.

[buffo]

People have largely underestimated Nich*a's involvement in this all... I'm not claiming to have any 'inside' info, but, it's not too hard to 'do the math' on this one.... ie: Prior to this 'easy-harvest discovery', these diodes sell, one-off, for $$$$ (...not sure of exact-price of these ones, but for-sure they weren't $35., dig?)

I don't think Nichia has anything to do with this. As others have already mentioned, they did the math and realized that selling millions of diodes to Casio at $2/unit makes more sense than selling a few hundred diodes per year at $2500/unit.

Now, if you were the manuf., and 'yesterday' you were selling them at $$$$ - but, today, they're on the market for $ - don't you think you'd 'put some pressure' on C@$!*, to 'stop the harvests'?

Maybe, but I think Casio is big enough to tell Nichia to get lost. I suspect that Casio is much larger (like, several orders of magnitude larger, if only judging by their market cap) than Nichia is.

Bottom line: Nichia needs Casio more than Casio needs Nichia. (Casio could always go back to some other source of blue for their projectors, leaving Nichia out in the cold for good.)

No, the furor that Casio has whipped up about people harvesting these diodes is undoubtedly coming directly from their own legal department. They're trying to cover their asses.

Personally, I find their case to be quite weak. I don't see them being culpable in this instance. OK, when the projectors first came out, the diodes were ridiculously accessible. But since then, they've added the funny triangle-head screws and the epoxy stuff, which in my mind makes the diodes difficult enough to harvest that a casual consumer will give up before they hurt themselves. And that's as it should be.

Anything Casio does from this point on (the cease-and-desist letters, et al) is solely to protect their brand image. Though admittedly, I think they're actually doing more damage to their image by trying to strong-arm harvesters (and even Internet forums) to get them to stop selling diodes or even talking about them.

At this point, Casio is starting to sound like a bag of dicks, at least in my opinion.

Adam

[Stoney3K]

No, the furor that Casio has whipped up about people harvesting these diodes is undoubtedly coming directly from their own legal department. They're trying to cover their asses.

Personally, I find their case to be quite weak. I don't see them being culpable in this instance. OK, when the projectors first came out, the diodes were ridiculously accessible. But since then, they've added the funny triangle-head screws and the epoxy stuff, which in my mind makes the diodes difficult enough to harvest that a casual consumer will give up before they hurt themselves. And that's as it should be.

Agreed. After all, Sharp is not responsible if I build a Tesla coil with a microwave transformed harvested from a Sharp appliance, and subsequently kill myself or anyone else with it.

Why would a laser diode from a Casio projector be any different? After all, non-laser projectors also have some really nasty components inside them that can easily kill you if you don't know what you're doing. If the HV from the lamp starter won't do the job, the mercury inside the bulb will surely give you a hard time.

[Roy G. Biv]

Common sense is a word that people should by now be familiar with in todays day and age....if not then there's something wrong with society in general.

Unfortunately, common sense is not enough to protect people from harm by lasers. If you by common sense mean sound judgment. You need knowledge before you can exercise good judgement. There is nothing in everyday life that warns us from the dangers of lasers. Only education can do this. Or the learning experience of blinding yourself or someone else. That is why you can see people who get a pointer in their hands, and don´t have any knowledge nor experience with lasers, wave them around pointing in peoples faces. They have no clue that these small devices can be really dangerous. "Really, this 400 nm laser beam can´t be that dangerous, can it? It´s barely visible!"

We need to educate people about lasers! Then they can use their common sense.

[masterpj]

The thing that disturbs me the most is that alot of people consider laser pointers as a toy.
Just because you can play with something doesn't make it a toy.
For example: I can play around with a knife, but that doesn't make it a toy.

However I don't think the things should be made more expensive.
Putting warning labels on something makes things appear cooler for alot of people.

When accidents happen and it involves press or sueing then it should be made clear that this user did NOT follow the rules of safety.
It shouldn't be blamed on the laser.

Off course a manufacturer has to obey and guarantee the safety, stability and good safety manual.

Don't feel like reading that manual? suit yourself but it's your fault when documented accidents and warnings become real.

Sorry for being that harsh, but It surprises me why the seller gets the blame.
In case of bad quality, unsufficient safety/warning or not behaving like it's supossed to, then I think you can start blaming it on the seller itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong or mistyped at some parts