# How should I choose a burning laser?



## clearlove

Hello, guys.
I'm a rookie and understand the knowledge of the product is not much, now, i want to buy a cheap and true burning laser, I do not know how much the minimum power for green, blue or red laser to burn something, i want to buy a green burning laser, please give me some advice, thank you


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## etudiant

Please be extra careful, these things will burn your eye faster than you can blink. Don't have them in any household with kids around, they are too risky.
Burning lasers will blind you just bouncing a reflection from a table top. You need to prepare for them like you would for any dangerous activity, get and wear proper gear, especially eye protection. High density welding goggles are a good thing unless you can afford frequency specific filters and lasers. ($$$) 
Burning lasers is a fuzzy term, even a modest size laser will pop a balloon or ignite a match, but they are not going to melt engines or cause siding to burst into flame.
Military lasers that can do that are in the 100 kilowatt class and need an airplane to power them.
Ordinary mortals can build/buy lasers in the 0-10 watt range and the laws require lasers to be labeled according to their power levels. Afaik, the US limit for lasers sold to consumers is under 10 milliwatt, but that surely has many loopholes and exceptions.
I've been very pleased with a well priced (about $20) green laser pointer from Sanwu ( https://www.sanwulasers.org ), it runs on a standard 18650 rechargeable battery and is an effective pointer even in daylight. They offer more costly units, but I have no need of those.
Note that this is merely a very high performance pointer, not a 'burning laser', although it certainly would pop a balloon. It still gives me enough concern that I always keep it locked and with the diffuser cap screwed on, because all it takes is one slip. These things are like loaded guns, waiting for the unwary.


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## kenneth_dart

etudiant said:


> Please be extra careful, these things will burn your eye faster than you can blink.


What would you guess is the minimum milliwatt needed to wound but not kill a house fly or mosquito? I don't want to kill the fly outright for fear of burning stuff in the background or potential eye damage (although with a strong laser, I'd also invest in eye protection).


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## mrsteel

kenneth_dart said:


> What would you guess is the minimum milliwatt needed to wound but not kill a house fly or mosquito? I don't want to kill the fly outright for fear of burning stuff in the background or potential eye damage (although with a strong laser, I'd also invest in eye protection).



I would not recommend using a laser for this, even with something lower power, it is too easy to get careless shining it around after an insect.


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## etudiant

kenneth_dart said:


> What would you guess is the minimum milliwatt needed to wound but not kill a house fly or mosquito? I don't want to kill the fly outright for fear of burning stuff in the background or potential eye damage (although with a strong laser, I'd also invest in eye protection).



Fly eyes are compound eyes, thousands of little units much like pixels in a camera sensor and even a very bright light won't blind them. Remember they have no eyelids, so they are adapted to seeing the sun directly all day long.
So the task is really to burn them. That will take more than a 1 watt laser, which is instant retina burn for humans. Seeing the fly while wearing the needed welder goggles is difficult. Find a better method is my strong recommendation.

The idea does work, I remember reading about a mosquito zapper that relied on laser pulses to fry the insects. I never saw the device, but presumably the beam only hit mosquitoes that flew into the trap, as the liability otherwise would be intolerable.


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## Bradford717

clearlove said:


> Hello, guys.
> I'm a rookie and understand the knowledge of the product is not much, now, i want to buy a cheap and true burning laser, I do not know how much the minimum power for green, blue or red laser to burn something, i want to buy a green burning laser, please give me some advice, thank you



While it's not the most humane method, I would only guess that it's no worse than being electrocuted to death :shakehead . I advise you to learn more about lasers and laser safety before you make any purchases. For your application the only laser I could recommend is an SD 301 - SD 303 because they have to be unfocused to burn anything and if it's a mosquito biting your arm, you obviously don't want to burn it with a laser. Minimum burning range would be within 12 Inches. At that that would be like trying to shoot a fly with a 9mm pistol. Other than setting up some type of a cage using mirrors which could cost a lot more than what you were looking to spend...I can't give you any other advice.


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## ragebot

etudiant said:


> SNIP.
> 
> Seeing the fly while wearing the needed welder goggles is difficult.
> 
> SNIP



NO NO NO:thumbsdow

It is not safe to use a laser wearing welder's goggles; they offer no protection and only hinder your vision.

You have to match the goggles to the wave length you want to cut; say for a 455nm laser you need goggles that cut out the 455nm wave length. Welder's goggles are simply an ND filter that decreases the amount of light reaching your eye; it does not cut any wave length.

Since a laser beam has so many photons (read so much brightness) a pair of welder's goggles would have reduced the other wave lengths to total darkness in order to provide any protection; so you would be blinded by the goggles.


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## wizardg

ragebot said:


> NO NO NO:thumbsdow
> 
> It is not safe to use a laser wearing welder's goggles; they offer no protection and only hinder your vision.
> 
> You have to match the goggles to the wave length you want to cut; say for a 455nm laser you need goggles that cut out the 455nm wave length. Welder's goggles are simply an ND filter that decreases the amount of light reaching your eye; it does not cut any wave length.
> 
> Since a laser beam has so many photons (read so much brightness) a pair of welder's goggles would have reduced the other wave lengths to total darkness in order to provide any protection; so you would be blinded by the goggles.



Thank you Ragebot! I was reading this thread and thinking the same thing. Welding eyewear is NOT a substitute for real laser protective safety glasses such as the Eagle Pair. Every time we have a solar eclipse you read a few horror stories of some poor sap permanently screwing up their vision by using arc welding glass to view the sun. Even a 5mW pointer is considerably brighter than the sun in terms of power/area.


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## daddygofast

I thought you can only damage your eyes if you get the laser IN your eye, not just reflected... I mean reflected off a mirror of course but like off a wall? 

Example, looking at the dot on the wall will blind you?


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## Overmind

@addygofast It depends on the wall and laser power. 
Things are not as simple as they may seem.
In a reflection damage there are many issues to consider:


- power 
- beam diameter and divergence
- color of laser
- color of surface 
- absorption/reflexion rating of the reflecting surface 


You can safely look from any angle at a 1000mW blue laser burning the paint of a black rubber wall or wood, but 100mW of the same blue reflected of a high quality white polished paint into your eye will cause permanent eye damage.


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## OscarM

What is the maximum burning laser power you can buy on the Internet?


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## Bethanywer

*How should I choose a burning laser*

I did some searching on the interwebs and I dont see very many options for the t4 s364.5, any sources you guys know of? Lots of t3 stuff out there.


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## Husker

etudiant said:


> I've been very pleased with a well priced (about $20) green laser pointer from Sanwu ( https://www.sanwulasers.org ), it runs on a standard 18650 rechargeable battery and is an effective pointer even in daylight. They offer more costly units, but I have no need of those.
> Note that this is merely a very high performance pointer, not a 'burning laser', although it certainly would pop a balloon. It still gives me enough concern that I always keep it locked and with the diffuser cap screwed on, because all it takes is one slip. These things are like loaded guns, waiting for the unwary.



The Link goes to a variety of models. What model do you have?


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## etudiant

Just their basic green laser pointer, it is plenty imho. https://www.sanwulasers.com/product/304


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## etudiant

See above


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## etudiant

ragebot said:


> NO NO NO:thumbsdow
> 
> It is not safe to use a laser wearing welder's goggles; they offer no protection and only hinder your vision.
> 
> You have to match the goggles to the wave length you want to cut; say for a 455nm laser you need goggles that cut out the 455nm wave length. Welder's goggles are simply an ND filter that decreases the amount of light reaching your eye; it does not cut any wave length.
> 
> Since a laser beam has so many photons (read so much brightness) a pair of welder's goggles would have reduced the other wave lengths to total darkness in order to provide any protection; so you would be blinded by the goggles.



You are of course totally correct and it was stupid of me to make that comment.
Lasers are brutally dangerous and nobody should try to work with them unless properly equipped with the right goggles appropriate for the laser involved.
Thank you for setting this straight and correcting me.


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## rickypanecatyl

etudiant said:


> You are of course totally correct and it was stupid of me to make that comment.
> Lasers are brutally dangerous and nobody should try to work with them unless properly equipped with the right goggles appropriate for the laser involved.
> Thank you for setting this straight and correcting me.



Good job etudiant! I'm pretty sure we all share bad info from time time... I know I have. But THAT was the best response to a correction I think I've ever witness in 15 or so years of reading forums!


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## Folgore202

Man, having a mosquito-burning laser was our dream with my father back in 1998 or something like that when we played Total Annihilation together! We tried jerry-rigging a cheap laser pointer I got at a county fair to several sources of energy, including but not limited to a model plane Ni-Cd battery, packs of up to 12 AA's and a car battery, but the only thing we burned was first some of my father's leg hair, then a little patch on my index (both due to touching wires) and then the pointer itself, which overheated and melted due to the immense amount of power for what it was conceived for.

... the most I think about my childhood and teenage years, the most I wonder how I'm alive today; in other words, don't tinker with lasers to make them powerful if you don't have specific education in that field.

But in any case, be careful, legislation on powerful lasers changes from one country to another (and, if I'm not mistaken, between states in the USA) and what may be legal in the country you're buying the laser from could very well be banned where you live.


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## Mishalk

Folgore202 said:


> Man, having a mosquito-burning laser was our dream with my father back in 1998 or something like that when we played Total Annihilation together! We tried jerry-rigging a cheap laser pointer I got at a county fair to several sources of energy, including but not limited to a model plane Ni-Cd battery, packs of up to 12 AA's and a car battery, but the only thing we burned was first some of my father's leg hair, then a little patch on my index (both due to touching wires) and then the pointer itself, which overheated and melted due to the immense amount of power for what it was conceived for.
> 
> ... the most I think about my childhood and teenage years, the most I wonder how I'm alive today; in other words, don't tinker with lasers to make them powerful if you don't have specific education in that field.
> 
> But in any case, be careful, legislation on powerful lasers changes from one country to another (and, if I'm not mistaken, between states in the USA) and what may be legal in the country you're buying the laser from could very well be banned where you live.


You certainly wouldn't want a laser powerful enough to light your weed near your face and eyes. Lasers are extremely dangerous, and you're asking for trouble if you don't have the proper protective eyewear. Why don't you get a plasma lighter? Wind-proof, with a lower risk of permanent blindness and burns...


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## cadbob

I have bought a few Sanulasers they are top quality and well made. Very Happy with every purchase I've made


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