looking for small, good quality laser projector for a product I'm designing

[aguadiego81]

I'm new to the area of lasers. I'm building a product that needs a small laser projector which needs to project an image consisting of at least 8 but ideally 10 to 13 alphanumeric monochrome (preferably red) characters onto a surface the size of a shoe-box from 10' feet away.

Desired dimensions (4" x 4") or similar to the footprint of a 2.5" Laptop HDD

USB powered would be preferable but PoE would be ideal.
Trying to get something high quality but under $100 per unit.

The image projected will be recorded at 15 frames per second so the pps should be at least 30,000.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what's the minimum , least cost device to accomplish this?

This will be used in an industrial setting. (not sure if that makes any difference)

Any help in finding something small would be greatly appreciated!!

Chreers ,

Ryan

[swamidog]

how bright does the projection need to be? there's a crop of low power (~80-150mW) single mode laser diodes that are quite low cost and have really excellent beam specs.

I'm new to the area of lasers. I'm building a product that needs a small laser projector which needs to project an image consisiting of at least 8 but ideally 10 to 13 alphanumeric monochrome characters onto a surface the size of a shoe-box from 10' feet away.

The image projected will be recorded at 15 frames per second so the pps should be at least 30,000.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what's the minimum , least cost device to accomplish this?

This will be used in an industrial setting. (not sure if that makes any difference)

Any help in finding something small would be greatly appreciated!!

Chreers ,

Ryan

[loopee]

Also what color monochrome, if it needs to be white then you'll need three color lasers to produce it?

I'd be looking at a LED/Laser based Pico projector with a lens to narrow the field of view (and increase brightness)
Would probably be the cheaper/simpler option to implement, especially for white color

[mixedgas]

If this device is for commercial sale, and if its accessible by production floor employees, in the US he's limited to Class IIIA power levels, unless he obtains a CDRH variance per site.

Ie you end up making something like a Virtek:

http://www.gerbertechnology.com/en-u...solutions.aspx

One offs for your own production floor might have more power. However, if you sell it, and it does not meet laser safety regs, OSHA will come calling.

If you use a diode laser, your looking for a single transverse mode laser with glass optics. Around here, that is referred to as simply single mode in the forums.
If you use a DPSS laser, your looking for a "TEM00" mode beam.


Steve