Quote:
Originally Posted by astronut
Ingo,
You appear to be very knowledgeable about lasers, I hope you can help me. 
I have a 20mw laser that works very well hand held, but if I mount it in the Scopestuff mount I have and leave it in the (not very) cold night air the beam vanishes.
A friend of mine has a cheap 5mw laser, mounted on his Scope. He can use it in very cold temps and it fires up instantly with a healthy beam every time.
What's the difference? I use freshly charged AAA NiMh batteries.
Thanks, John.  |
It could be it's a modded one and it's sucking up the batteries really fast because they pull a certian mA. The diode is probably turned up, sucking more juice than it is supposed to.
I'm not saying it is a modded one, but it could be the cold. Cold will shift the wavelengths the diode gives out and the Nd:YVO4 crystals require exactly 808nm. If it's too cold, it wont give out the full output due to efficiency loss and drop in wavelength to maybe 807.7nm which wont lase fully.