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Today was range day for school.
Outside of school, I got into KSP (seriously, hadn't played it until this past month), which got me watching some videos on S C I E N C E stuff, which ended up with a video recommendation for a video about taking sketchy ebay lasers and making them more powerful. Now one of my good friends from school (JG) was a laser physicist, and I remember way back when (maybe 2012?) I was looking at buying one of the Wicked Lasers and he told me "just build your own, it's way cheaper." I think I ended up with a 3W 445nm blue laser. Anyways, I had more laser parts but never did anything, but that video rekindled my interest. I've also been itching to build some cool engineering stuff and this is kind of a way to start building stuff. Anyways, the video mentioned that these lasers are sold as 5mW lasers but they're way more powerful. So of course I bought one and wow, it's at least a watt, maybe more like 1.5W.
This merits a quick note about laser safety. Most lasers that people think of are continuous wave diode lasers, and the maximum safe exposure is for 5 mW (0.005 watts of power). Anything above this and you risk eye damage if you stare into the beam. Above a half watt and you can get serious and potentially permanent eye damage _just by looking at the beam spot_. Above 5mW you really need eye protection, a pair of laser safety glasses. I have a pair from survival lasers but the laser I got also came with a pair. They don't fit well over the eye so there's a serious concern that you could get reflection under the eye or from the edges. Also if they market the laser as 5mW, I'm not sure I trust the eye protection they sent to be valid for a much, much more powerful laser.
Anyways, lasers. They're cool.