Ok, so the background to these is as follows:
I have 2 Laserwave 300mW 532 heads in my smaller RGB projectors, but was never really happy as they were bought separately, and as such, exhibited different power and modulation characteristics.
So I recently took the decision to rebuild the 2 projectors, and up the power a bit in the process.
I did some research to see if I could get a supplier to sell me a matched, graded pair of heads, but after some deliberation, decided that I would probably be best off buying a larger number of heads, testing them to make 2 close pairs (2 RGB's and 2 green satellites), and then selling off the ones that were excess.
So, out of the 6, these are the spare 2, and have only run for long enough to do the power tests (about 1hr total).
Ok, so to the testing.
CW is alright but it only tells you outright power, not necesssarilly how it will perform in the real world in a projector. So I devised a couple of tests that have proven quite useful in establishing common characteristics. Note that just looking at the power wasn't the intention, it was to look at it compared to the others being graded. So out of the 2 pairs I've kept, they were the ones best matched across the 3 tests.
LPM is a Laserbee II Deluxe
Test 1 - 5v CW for 20 mins (which also served as initial warmup for the other tests)
Test 2 - LaserMedia test (the one with diagonals for setting up scanner gain). This is well known to have a very high 'on' ratio, even when on a DAC like FB3 which modulates every cycle. Generally, I find the closer this gets to CW, the better the rise time characteristics of the laser. Some lasers give higher power here than CW which can indicate that the supplier has optimized for modulation use, rather than CW (I had a Laserwave like this)
Test 3 - Single targetted beam at 100 points. More modulation than test 2, so lower powers again, but in comparison shows how the longer periods 'off' affect the head.
And from there, I draw my conclusions....
So, what do you get...
Laser head
Analogue driver
5v PSU
Whilst the drivers are pre-drilled for mounting plates, they weren't supplied with any, so I bought some angle. There's 2 blanks supplied that just need drilling.
Head Number 1 - (serial 11120038) - £350
This was nearly the daddy of the 6, with good CW and modulated power.
Head Number 2 - (serial 11120002) - £325
As you can see, this one makes more power under modulation than CW, and rock stable doing it.
Will do both for £650 and include UK shipping in that price.
Europe and US I guess we need to talk shipping in advance