Re: Lucky Duck laser
Noah Acres of Lucky Duck was very prompt in his reply to my email. It turns out that there is a happy ending. After checking the serial number of my laser to see what the actual tested power was, he wrote: *** "Chuck, We have that one tested on 2/15 at a little over 19mw. Normally they will vary about 10% depending on batteries, temperature, etc. I think it's more likely your older pointer is greater than 5mw. There really is no such thing as "factory tuned." It just means they tested their lasers and set aside the higher powered ones to sell for a bit more. When did you buy it? Up until about 2 years ago it was pretty common to find lasers that were way over powered (being 10mw or more). As manufacturing processes become more refined lasers turned out a lot closer to spec (the spec being exactly 5mw). It used to be where you might find a few 1mw and a few 20mw in the same batch and a lot more in the range between; but now they're all really close to 5mw. We actually set these to 20mw by design though. Thanks, Noah Acres Luckyduck.com" *** So, it would appear that my old faithful Beta pointer was in the 20mw range all along- no wonder I felt it superior to all other 5mw lasers I'd seen, it actually was- and that explains why the Beta and Ducky laser beams are identical in brightness. But of course had we done the laser test in 2005, we probably would have discovered that by now. Folks could have had a 20mw laser long before now; those of you who bought the Beta pointer should feel good that you were ahead of the trend in this instance. Don't feel cheated if you bought the Lucky Duck "20mw" unit, you got what you paid for, and for a little less money than the Beta. One more thing, Acres wrote in a prior email, in answer to my observation that the label didn't match the power rating of the laser: "There is a bit of difficulty in importing lasers greater than 5mw. To simplify things, we used the same 5mw labels as always, even though some are of greater strength." That seems a bit sketchy, but as long as the laser is really a 20mw unit, I'll accept an "eyewash" label. He's the one that has to deal with government import restrictions, not me. I still want to do the laser comparison test, anybody else? ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, cmh856@aol.com wrote:
That seems a bit sketchy, but as long as the laser is really a 20mw unit, I'll accept an "eyewash" label.
Does anyone know how laser power levels are measured? In the absence of a reliable means of measuring "light output power", it'd be interesting to compare the electrical power consumption of the 20mw models against the 5mw models. I don't know if laser diode efficiency varies by a factor of four, but if the 20mw laser consumes less than four times the power consumed by an average 5mw laser, I'd be very suspicious of claims that the 20mw laser is really putting out four times more laser light power. It should be a simple test: first measure the battery voltage and then put an ammeter inline with the batteries to see how much current flows when the device is switched on. If you want to add another dimension to your comparison tests but don't have a volt/ammeter, I'll bring one. :-) Chris
By all means, Chris, that does sound interesting. I have an excellent digital bench-top meter, but bring yours too- and we may need some specialized jumpers/patch cords. I'm also looking into a lux meter to put some numbers to output brightness (Ivo, are you still on the list?). I was thinking about possibly the first Friday in April (6th), I will have some time off-work then, hopefully. -----Original Message----- From: slas@2nerds.com To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:30 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Lucky Duck laser On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, cmh856@aol.com wrote:
That seems a bit sketchy, but as long as the laser is really a 20mw unit, I'll accept an "eyewash" label.
Does anyone know how laser power levels are measured? In the absence of a reliable means of measuring "light output power", it'd be interesting to compare the electrical power consumption of the 20mw models against the 5mw models. I don't know if laser diode efficiency varies by a factor of four, but if the 20mw laser consumes less than four times the power consumed by an average 5mw laser, I'd be very suspicious of claims that the 20mw laser is really putting out four times more laser light power. It should be a simple test: first measure the battery voltage and then put an ammeter inline with the batteries to see how much current flows when the device is switched on. If you want to add another dimension to your comparison tests but don't have a volt/ammeter, I'll bring one. :-) Chris ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
On 20 Mar 2007, at 12:39, cmh856@aol.com wrote:
I was thinking about possibly the first Friday in April (6th), I will have some time off-work then, hopefully.
How's about during SLAS's Astronomy Day star party at SPOC on Saturday, 21 April? Listening to heavy rain here in Stansbury, Patrick
That's too far away for me to have any schedule visibility just yet, but if I can get away, and my partners in this experiment are game, then it's probably possible. What do you say, Wayne? Chris, are you in? Hopefully Bob "Death Star" Moore will bring his 50mw WMD as well! -----Original Message----- From: paw@wirelessbeehive.com To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 4:00 AM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Lucky Duck laser On 20 Mar 2007, at 12:39, cmh856@aol.com wrote:
I was thinking about possibly the first Friday in April (6th), I > will have some time off-work then, hopefully.
How's about during SLAS's Astronomy Day star party at SPOC on Saturday, 21 April? ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
participants (3)
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cmh856＠aol.com -
Patrick Wiggins -
slas＠2nerds.com