If you have a few extra dollars and some good eBay luck you could make your own Blu Ray Laser project. Not as polished as the Wicked Laser version but very nice for a DIY project.
"I found this article and the next day, I had bought a PS3 drive off eBay ($50). Took it apart two days ago, created the circuit yesterday and tonight I have a finished Blue Laser pointer."
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You may want to rethink this one. Since that laser was never meant for human visible use you could be getting yourself into vision damage. Not from the laser itself, but its wavelength. Blu-Ray lasers operate at a 405nm wavelength approximately, UV is between 10 nm and 400 nm. Thats too near the border for Violet/Ultraviolet light or at least too close for my comfort. As any welder can tell you, retina burns from staring at even reflected high UV output can be permanent . In addition the closer to the high end (especially 360 nm and up) you get the more damage occurs to the lens of the eye. ( http://radsafe.berkeley.edu/nir1101b.html )
Not an expert but the risk seems a bit high.
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Well i guess this is just as bad as a 5mm UV LED.
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Not necessarily “just as bad”: a 5mm UV LED’s intensity output is probably not nearly as great as the laser’s.
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Is there a schematic to drive the UV diode? I couldn’t find one on any of the sites listed.
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What is the circuit for the controller board? I need to use this as a excitation source on a inverted microscope for some experiments. Our budget at the moment is small and $2K for a laser that might or might not work is too spendy.
Thanks