# Spyder III Pro Arctic -- Beam Analysis Only.



## Raccoon (Jun 26, 2010)

An image supplement to the *Wicked Lasers 445nm <1W Spyder III Pro Arctic Series Series* thread.

I would ask that this thread be restricted to specific and constructive conversation and contributions of beam shots and videos. The thread is intended to provide a critical analysis of this specific laser product and its components. There will be no banter or speculation about laws, dangers, burning things, and other uses or mis-uses of lasers. Moderator has permission to delete off-topic posts.
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Wicked lasers appears to have uploaded a video to YouTube demonstrating their newest product. Hundreds of orders have been taken, none of them have been filled yet that we know about.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-SduY4A2kE*

I have created a *gallery of snap shots from this video*. Stills are much easier to ponder over and analyze, so for your convenience I've included a few of them below.































So far so good. These are the first images we're getting from this product in actual use, albeit coming from the manufacturer themselves. Since no orders have been filled yet, this is all we get for now.

There's a bit of concern and speculation over whether the dot will be a clean circle. The animation above shows a scaled comparison of the dot viewed through filtered safety glasses, verses the dot in full bloom.

The oval appearance is definitely caused, at least in part, by the sideways perspective of the camera. It is really hard to say whether it is purely circular when viewed from straight on.

I'm also concerned about the amount of side spill, or presence of "zing zing" (spill from a single direction). These video stills reveal a bit of what appears to be sidweays spill, but it's hard to tell how much of this is actually just the camera's CCD overloading.










As seen from an earlier angle, almost straight on.






Considering that the main attention of the beam is being absorbed by a black material intended to absorb laser light, which is set about an inch off the wall, we have to assume the light hitting the wall is actually "zing", and not camera optic flaring from the center dot. I believe what we see hitting the wall must be an emission coming all the way from the laser module sitting on the table.

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For anyone who acquires this laser, or builds one of their own from the same diode, please post pictures here.

We are interested in close up details of the dot shape and size-over-distance (divergence). When taking pictures, try having the camera pointed in straight perspective to the wall, and not from a sideways angle. Please measure and mark and include every detail. Please try taking photos of a filtered dot from 1 meter away and 100 meters away, on a target that includes scale/ruler. The camera should be as close to the filtered dot as possible while in focus.


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## SmurfTacular (Jun 27, 2010)

Wow your really did your homework on this. I bought mine on the 12th of June, and when it comes I'll do some quarter mile shots of the beam, that way i'd get really accurate divergence measurements. I talked to WL support two weeks ago, and they said I'd get my laser by the end of the month... Well... the end of the month is almost here and Im getting really anxious to receive this beast. Everytime I hear of see a UPS truck, I immediately get up and run to the door and watch him, unfortunately he always drives past my house... :scowl:


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## ixfd64 (Jun 27, 2010)

The beam at the aperture looks a lot wider than the advertised 1.5 mm.


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## wyager (Jun 28, 2010)

I really doubt wicked spent extra money putting in corrective optics, and if they had a new lens for multimode diodes we would have heard about it. They probably just have a choke at the end. BTW I built one of these myself at about the same power level, and when I unfocus the beam a bunch it looks just like what wicked has-two flat sides with oblong ends. And that is through a cheap plastic lens, I'm still waiting on a nicer lens that apparently cleans up the beam a lot. I'm afraid to turn the laser on now because apparently the plastic lenses cause flashback and can kill the diode (not to mention melt at these power levels :naughty so I can take pictures once I get a better lens if you want... I'm pretty sure there are some threads at LPF that have close up dot-shots.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Jun 28, 2010)

You sure they didn't just use a round aperature? Looks like a round section of transverse multimode beam to me....


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## wyager (Jun 28, 2010)

bshanahan14rulz said:


> You sure they didn't just use a round aperature? Looks like a round section of transverse multimode beam to me....


That's what I'm saying. By "choke" I meant a round piece of metal. Wicked is probably being as cheap as possible here, which means no fancy optics. I wonder if they even used AR coated lenses. Heck, maybe they just took the crappy lenses out of the projector and stuck them in the laser. That would make sense if they're blocking out part of the beam anyway.


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## dieselducy (Jun 29, 2010)

once i get mine ill do some beamshots as well from a distance of 100 meters.


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## senecaripple (Jun 29, 2010)

thanks for the pix.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Jun 30, 2010)

wyager said:


> That's what I'm saying. By "choke" I meant a round piece of metal. Wicked is probably being as cheap as possible here, which means no fancy optics. I wonder if they even used AR coated lenses. Heck, maybe they just took the crappy lenses out of the projector and stuck them in the laser. That would make sense if they're blocking out part of the beam anyway.



Ah, gotcha. Choke = aperture. We're on the same page hehe.

I'm sure they at least used glass Aixiz. I don't know if you've seen the collimated beam from those stock lenses, but it would be much worse than those beamshots. They are probably good at getting most of the blue light in a general forward direction though.


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## wyager (Jun 30, 2010)

bshanahan14rulz said:


> Ah, gotcha. Choke = aperture. We're on the same page hehe.
> 
> I'm sure they at least used glass Aixiz. I don't know if you've seen the collimated beam from those stock lenses, but it would be much worse than those beamshots. They are probably good at getting most of the blue light in a general forward direction though.


If they're using an aperture, they might as well just use the stock lens. While it makes those disgusting wings to the side, it also makes a decent circle in the center.


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## R11GS (Jul 8, 2010)

oops...


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## Raccoon (Jul 21, 2010)

It should be mentioned in this thread that a new video has been released by Wicked Lasers.

It shows the demonstration of a new interlock feature for the laser; a digital combination lock of button presses required to activate the laser at full power levels. It also demonstrates more beam shots, but they are over saturated in my opinion by using intentionally low lighting and ISO camera settings.

You can view it here.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USQGkKS-R7g*


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## matt304 (Jul 22, 2010)

Those rooms are so saturated with fog when they demonstrate the lasers it cracks me up.


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## wyager (Jul 22, 2010)

matt304 said:


> Those rooms are so saturated with fog when they demonstrate the lasers it cracks me up.


I know lol, with the first video everyone kept saying "OH MY GOD, it's so bright and powerful!" and I was the first one to point out that the room was totally full of smoke Of course others saw, but most didn't.


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## Raccoon (Jul 28, 2010)

It appears someone over on Laser Pointer Forums finally received their Arctic, and they posted beam shots. *You can view them here.*

One point of interest is the shape of the dot at only 25 feet away. His model (your results may vary?) clearly shows an elongated line, more than just an oval, for a dot. I've hot-linked his image below. (I don't feel guilty since it has his attribution mark)





The videos from Wicked Laser do show a dot with an oval appearance at about 15-20 feet distance, but nothing quite so profound as this. I believe this photo alone will give many people second thoughts about the purchase.

Read the thread I linked to above for more discussion about Spdkilz's beam shots.


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## Raccoon (Jul 28, 2010)

Here's another dot-shot of the Arctic, taken by laser_freak from LPF. The "dot" is redish because the image is taken through a pair of safety glasses, as described on the thread (here).





I'm still waiting on results from field measurements to determine the Arctic's actual beam divergence (mRad).


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## wyager (Jul 29, 2010)

I saw those pics  That's awful. Even with a minimally corrective single element 405-g-1 lens you get a better dot than that. WTF, are they purposefully EXPANDING the fast axis?


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## bshanahan14rulz (Jul 29, 2010)

I'm pretty sure that their beam-corrective optics is a fancy way of saying the diode's output isn't just output, they put a lens in front. 

You can't really expect some sort of AR-coated micro cylinder lens or some tiny AR-coated glass prism pairs stuffed into that funky thing.


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## matt304 (Jul 29, 2010)

Yeah, that is the worst beam of all the 445nm laser setups possible. It looks like they literally did expand the fast axis.

I am currently attempting to find prism pairs that are cheap enough to be used to correct the full characteristics of the 445nm diode. If anyone has cheap lens connections they know of, let me know please.


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## Zike (Jul 29, 2010)

The artic beam/lens seems to have been set up so the focus point is several inches from the output so people can burn things easily.

The result is that the beam expand pretty fast after.

The obvious reason is that most videos and major interest are to burn things and that's what makes the sales.

You will definately need to wait for a _focusable_ G3 to be 100% happy with it.


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