Future Pricing of 445's

[instinct]

Hmm, but isn't X-laser very much an American run company? He certainly seems to have a very good grasp of English when he posts here.

It's an American Laser company, and i'm pretty sure Dan knows what he is doing. Check out Buffo's review of X-Lasers operation.

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...er-s-operation

[Andrew_D]

Outstanding advice.

Within a year (and probably a lot sooner than that) I'm certain that we will see several commercial laser modules based on these diodes. (We're already starting to see some on E-bay, though none from any of the big manufacturers - yet.) So even if you're not a do-it-yourself wiz, you'll soon have an affordable off-the-shelf solution available to you.

And yeah - longer term we may very well see newer diodes with better beam specs, making it foolish to hoard a bunch of these diodes now. (Unless you have a specific use in mind for them already.)

Adam

Not to correct you Adam but rather to interject, these 445 modules are now being sold commercially by Kvant. CNI also recently sent out a new list of RGB modules featuring 445's as the blue source.

https://www.ctlasers.com/purchases/p...s-c-42_45.html

Yay Marc for getting Kvant!

[buffo]

na I think they make those numbers up... they were selling their 405 stuff as 415 IIRC

That was a typo on some early ad material, and they corrected it. (Though I have seen as high as 411 nm out of a blu-ray diode, but it's only the off-spec ones that do that.)

Hmm, but isn't X-laser very much an American run company? He certainly seems to have a very good grasp of English when he posts here.

Yeah, they're based in Washington DC.

Isn't that splitting hairs a little, given the variation found on diodes due to temp, etc? E.g. the 445's spectrographed nearer 440, the 642's sold at 640, etc I'm not sure many diode sources are bang on the money. Does that mean every 455nm source that comes up through Googling is actually mislabelled?

Maybe it's a typo, maybe it's marketing embellishment, or maybe they do exhibit some spectral drift from one diode to the next.

I should also point out that X-laser has been selling 445 nm lasers for years. Their higher-end RGB projectors (1 watt and up) all use Nichia diodes. (I saw one in operation when I toured their facility back in May of this year.)

Not to correct you Adam but rather to interject, these 445 modules are now being sold commercially by Kvant. CNI also recently sent out a new list of RGB modules featuring 445's as the blue source.

Thanks for that info! I knew that Kvant also sold 445 nm lasers,but I didn't know they were using the cheaper diodes that can be found in the casio projectors. That explains the drastic reduction in price! (If memory serves, just a few months ago a 1 watt 445 nm laser from Kvant would have cost north of $3,000...)

So yeah, quite a bit less than a year to wait!

Adam