medical (I guess it’s in the range for tattoo removal, but power rating for these lasers are stated weirdly)
for those curious (you probably know this though), lots of these are pulsed, primarily to avoid excessive local heating (burning) of the tissue being lased. these can have peak powers in the kilowatt range!
watts are energy (in joules) divided by time (in seconds), and while relating energy to time is helpful for constant-power applications—and even some certain pulsed applications—the timeframe here is often small to the point of not mattering much, and a direct measure of the total energy delivered is ultimately most useful. nonetheless they are very impressive sounding and goofy, like “oh i work with multi-KILOwatt lasers on the daily :3” hehe
any kind of pointing, besides cases where you wish to permanently damage your audience.
for a single one watt beam of light, absolutely! do not bring those to the school show-and-tell. but there are absolutely lasers this (or even more) powerful used in concert settings and so forth. still, you’re very right, care must be taken with them too.
also your point of output contamination is spot on! +1 to avoiding cheap “powerful” lasers :)
lots of these are pulsed, primarily to avoid excessive local heating (burning) of the tissue being lased. these can have peak powers in the kilowatt range!
I just wrote “weird” because trying to explain 250mJ delivered in 15ns became too much math to put into a comment I wanted people to read.
also your point of output contamination is spot on! +1 to avoiding cheap “powerful” lasers :)
That’s what fucking around finds out for you. Luckily I never got to the stage in my project where I put on my budget non-certified goggles, and powered on el cheapo laser diode. But if I can help somebody else to not trust the nominal values, then I’ll chime in when this is brought up.
for those curious (you probably know this though), lots of these are pulsed, primarily to avoid excessive local heating (burning) of the tissue being lased. these can have peak powers in the kilowatt range!
watts are energy (in joules) divided by time (in seconds), and while relating energy to time is helpful for constant-power applications—and even some certain pulsed applications—the timeframe here is often small to the point of not mattering much, and a direct measure of the total energy delivered is ultimately most useful. nonetheless they are very impressive sounding and goofy, like “oh i work with multi-KILOwatt lasers on the daily :3” hehe
for a single one watt beam of light, absolutely! do not bring those to the school show-and-tell. but there are absolutely lasers this (or even more) powerful used in concert settings and so forth. still, you’re very right, care must be taken with them too.
also your point of output contamination is spot on! +1 to avoiding cheap “powerful” lasers :)
I just wrote “weird” because trying to explain 250mJ delivered in 15ns became too much math to put into a comment I wanted people to read.
That’s what fucking around finds out for you. Luckily I never got to the stage in my project where I put on my budget non-certified goggles, and powered on el cheapo laser diode. But if I can help somebody else to not trust the nominal values, then I’ll chime in when this is brought up.