PULSAR LASER MODULE
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* IMPORTANT: Pricing is accurate as of 08-30-08. Please visit the Currency Calculator for the latest currency conversion rates from US dollars to Chinese yuan.
(In reference to the small package I received from Wicked Lasers around 9:33am PDT on 07-09-07):
{sung like the Foreigner song "Feels Like the First Time"}
This is the Pulsar 6-Pack, which includes the following: Pulsar Series laser unit (the 75mW one in this case), Wicked cap set, blue (red-blocking) "LaserShades", Dragon Case, 10 pcs Wicked Lasers balloons, and a gift box.
The Pulsar laser module comes in a handsome silver-plated brass body; the silver plating is polished to a high shine. It has the "Wicked Lasers" logo and the phrase "P75" smartly laser-engraved in its barrel, as the photograph directly below shows:
It generates a red beam (measured spectrographically at 661.350nm) with enough power to burn, destroy, and leave wrinkles everywh...o wait!!! wrong infomercial!!! , and it feeds from two AAA cells.
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To use your shiny new (or corroded old) Pulsar, just aim it at something you wish to point out, and press & hold down the button on the barrel for as long as you need the laser spot.
Release the button to turn the laser module back off. Yes, it really is as easy as that.
The Pulsar comes with two "Wicked Caps"; one has a positive (magnifying) lens in it to focus the beam into a tiny spot that can burn things and pop balloons. To use them, pick the largest of the two caps, and firmly press it over the "business-end" of your Pulsar. From then on, you can unscrew the lens-end of the cap and replace it with the other at will. One of the caps has a positive lens in it; the other has a transparent, colorless glass window in it. This is not a polarising material; I verified this with the LCD display on my cellular telephone.
As you can see, the Wicked Caps do not detract from the appearance of this laser.
The cap with the flat window in it is not AR-coated; I verified this with both a flashlight (checking the reflection visually) and with the Pulsar itself (reflecting its beam onto a door).
The laser module comes with a rectangular hinge-lidded plastic presentation case with a foam cutout for the module. You may store your Pulsar in this case if desired.
It also comes with a cylindrical (toliet pipe-shaped or cigar-shaped) metal gift tin with a Chinese graphic embossed on its outside.
Here, let me go snap a photograph of it...snap, click, flash...and it's off to the Fotomat we go...
To change the batteries in your Wicked Lasers Pulsar red laser module, unscrew and remove the tailcap, gently place it on the ground, and kick it into the garden so the hungry, hungry praying mantids will think it's something yummy to eat and subsequently strike at it...O WAIT!!! YOU'LL NEED THAT!!! So just set it aside instead.
Tip the two used AAA cells out of the barrel and into your hand, and dispose of, recycle, or recharge them as you see fit.
Insert two new AAA cells into the barrel, button-end (+) positive first. This is the opposite of how batteries are installed in most other laser pointers/laser modules, so please pay attention to polarity here.
Screw the tailcap back on, and be done with it.
Aren't you glad you didn't kick that tailcap into the garden with all those hungry, hungry praying mantids now?
Here is what a praying mantis looks like.
I found this guy on the morning of 09-08-06 clinging to the basket of my scooter.
There is an advisory to *NOT* use lithium cells (Energizer L92 or equiv.) in the Pulsar on its web page at Wicked Lasers. So I would heed that advise, and heed it well, or else you might have something rather expen$ive to feed the hungry, hungry garbage can.
Current usage measures 151mA on my DMM's 4A scale.
This is a laser module, not a flashlight. So I won't throw it against the wall, stomp on it, try to drown it in the toylet bowl or the cistern, run over it, swing it against the concrete floor of a patio, bash it open to check it for candiosity, fire it from the cannoņata (I guess I've been watching the TV program "Viva Piņata" too much again - candiosity is usually checked with a scanner-type device on a platform or a handheld wand), send it to the Daystrom Institute for additional analysis, or inflict upon it punishments that flashlights may have inflicted upon them. Therefore, this section of the laser's web page will seem a bit more bare than this section of the web page on a page about a flashlight.
This is a directly-injected laser though, who's active components are the laser diode and the collimating lens. So it should withstand accidents better than a DPSS (diode pumped solid state) laser - the type of laser assembly found in yellow (593.5nm), green (532nm) and blue (473nm) laser pointers & laser modules (handheld or laboratory). These lasers have several additional components (crystals, filters, etc.) in the optical train, and you can knock them out of alignment by doing little more than looking at them the wrong way. And if any of these components are knocked out of whack, you'll no longer get your yellow, green, or blue laser beam.
***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!***
This laser is a CDRH Class IIIb instrument because of its high output power; so you definitely do not want to shine it into your eyes, other people's eyes, pets' eyes, for that matter, the eyes of any person or animal you encounter. Eye damage can occur faster than the blink reflex can protect them, regardless of what species' eyes you irradiate with this laser. So just don't do it.
And fer chrissakes (and for heaven sakes and for Pete sakes and your sakes too) do not shine this laser at any vehicle, whether ground-based like a motorcycle, car, or truck, or air-based like a helicopter, airplane, or jet. And if you shoot it at a person in the dark and he turns out to be a police officer, he may think he's being targeted, unholster (pull out) his gun, and hose you down with it.
The beam diameter at aperture (where it leaves the laser) is ~4.50mm, and the beam divergence as stated on the Pulsar's web page is stated as 0.50mRad (0.50 milliradians).
Also stated on the Pulsar's web page is that the Pulsar has a TEM00 (transverse electromagnetic mode 00) beam - that is, the laser produces a beam with a Gaussian power distribution; circular with a central hotspot and dimmer corona. This is a typical laser mode, and is how many lasers (well, most lasers for consumer use anyway) are designed to operate.
The beam from the Pulsar is not perfecly circular; it is oval (somewhat egg-shaped) like beams from all directly-injected diode lasers that do not have special beam shape corrective optics. But other than beam shape, it would still fall under TEM00 parameters.
The Pulsar comes with two "Wicked Caps", one of which contains a positive (magnifying) lens; the other is protective only - there's nothing but a transparent window in it. To burn stuff, push the Wicked Cap with the lens in it onto the laser-end of your Pulsar; the focal length of this lens appears to be ~2" (~5.1cm). Push the largest one over the end of the laser; you can then unscrew the lensed cap and screw on the unlensed cap at your convenience.
The Wicked Cap with the plain window in it can help prevent things like dust rabbits, lint, and dirt from getting on your Pulsar's lens, so this cap was not included for nothing - it really does have a purpose.
When you purchase the "6 pack" special, a pair of blue laser safety goggles in a zippered pouch is present. Power output of the Pulsar (75mW) when attenuated by these goggles is just 0.06138mW (~61.4ĩW) - well within CDRH Class II limitations (To put it simply, this allows an intrabeam exposure (looking directly down the barrel) of 250mS (1/4 of a second) with absolute impunity). The goggles also come with a cleaning cloth; found in the zippered pouch with the goggles themselves.
The Pulsar is true CW (continuous wave), not quasi-CW or pulsed. I verified this two ways: I rapidly waved it around to see if a broken line appeared (it did not), and I tested it with an oscilloscope to detect pulsed operation at faster speeds than an optical detection method can reveal.
The Pulsar is bright enough to "reach out and touch something" at least 200' away in broad daylight; I confirmed this by irradiating a white portion of a structure in daylight (shaded from direct sunlight) at 200 feet - through mosquito netting no less - and could easily see the vivid red spot.
The only thing I'd like to have seen on the Pulsar is a pocket clip. Not only does this facilitate carriage of the laser, it would serve quite effectively as an anti-roll device. With no clip, the Pulsar will try to get away from you when placed on a nonlevel surface; and if it falls onto concrete or other hard surface from more than a few inches, it could spell the end of your shiny new Pulsar. This alone will prevent the Pulsar from being rated a full five stars on this website, but I think it will still make it into The Trophy Case.
I used a Sima Micro LensPen to clean the lens on one of the Wicked Caps, and the window in the other. I have no failures, breakage, or malfunctions to report.
The CDRH warning label on the Pulsar appears to be at least reasonably accurate. The only innacuracy is the advertised wavelength: it reads "650nm" when it was measured spectrographically at 660nm. But I'm not going to start a uranating contest over 10nm - the label is fine just the way it is. Both wavelengths (650nm and 660nm) are red anyway, so it's, as they say, "close enough for government work".
There is no battery rattle; not even when the Pulsar is shaken quite vigorously both in the X and Y axes (front-to-back and side-to-side).
Beam photograph at ~12".
Beam spot is significantly smaller than it appears; the beam image bloomed quite a bit.
Power output is too high for me to measure with the instruments at my disposal.
upright coin-op arcade video games from the 1980s.
And that graphic toward the right is:
A "BIG SCARY LASER" poster sent by www.megagreen.co.uk
Beam photograph on a structure ~200 feet away.
Photograph was taken at 8:01pm PDT 07-09-07. 14x zoom was used.
Beam photograph in direct sunlight at ~6 feet. 6x zoom was used. Taken at 5:34pm PDT 07-11-07.
Beam photograph on a structure ~200 feet away.
Photograph was taken at 6:08pm PDT (full daylight!) on 07-15-07. 14x zoom was used.
Beam photograph in light fog, taken at ~5:49am PDT 11-01-07.
Beam as shown in fog.
Photograph was taken at 6:27am PST on 11-29-08 in north Sacramento CA. USA.
Spectrographic analysis of this laser.
Spectrographic analysis of this laser, with spectrometer's response narrowed to a range of 650nm to 670nm.
Wavelength is advertised at 650nm; actual wavelength is ~660nm.
Repeat spectrographic analysis of this laser,
with spectrometer's response narrowed to a range of 660nm to 665nm.
I did this to make a closer pinpoint of the Pulsar's actual wavelength, which is 661.350nm.
Spectrographic analysis of this laser; newest (03-25-12) spectrometer software settings used.
Same as above; spectrometer's response narrowed to a band between 660nm to 665nm to pinpoint wavelength, which is 663.297nm.
Video clip on YourTube showing the laser irradiating (and spinning) the vanes of a radiometer.
This clip is approximately 5.6 megabytes (5,842,068 bytes) in length; dial-up users please be aware.
It will take no less than twenty minutes to load at 48.0Kbps.
The sound you might hear is an electric fan, and may be muted or even ignored if it pisses you off.
WMP movie (.avi extension) showing the laser irradiating a balloon and causing it to "destruct".
This clip is approximately 1.0 megabytes (1,117,188 bytes) in length; dial-up users please be aware.
It will take no less than five minutes to load at 48.0Kbps.
The only sound you're likely to hear is the explosive decompression of a balloon, and may be muted or ignored if desired.
WMP movie (.avi extension) showing the laser spinning the vanes of a radiometer.
Note that the spot turns white at points; this is the black coating on the radiometer's vanes incandescing (glowing white hot).
This clip is approximately 2.4 megabytes (2,573,582 bytes) in length; dial-up users please be aware.
It will take no less than ten minutes to load at 48.0Kbps.
The sound you may hear in the background is the TV game show "Camouflage".
This product is not sound-sensitive, and the sound may be muted or ignored if desired.
WMP movie (.avi extension) showing the laser burning the vanes of a radiometer.
Same as above, but this time I held the laser safety googles in front of
the camera's lens to better show the laser burning the radiometer.
Note that the spot turns white at points; this is the black coating on the radiometer's vanes incandescing (glowing white hot).
This clip is approximately 1.8 megabytes (1,885,456 bytes) in length; dial-up users please be aware.
It will take no less than seven minutes to load at 48.0Kbps.
I cannot provide any of them in other formats, so please do not ask.
TEST NOTES:
Test unit was purchased from www.wickedlasers.com on 07-05-07, and was received on 07-09-07.
UPDATE 07-12-07:
In my opinion, this laser should have been called the "Sonar", and the Sonar should have been called the Pulsar. The reason is that this laser (the Pulsar) is CW, and the Sonar is pulsed. Make any sense?
UPDATE 08-13-07:
The Wicked Cap with the convex lens in it fell -- HARD -- onto concrete from ~3 feet, and it was not damaged in any way that I can detect (with the naked eye anyway).
PROS:
Great looking body
Stupid bright!!!
Powerful enough to burn, destroy, and leave wrinkles everywh...o wait!!! wrong infomercial!!!
Uses batteries that are common and relatively inexpensive
CONS:
No pocket clip - that's what nocked that last half star off its rating
MANUFACTURER: Wicked Lasers
PRODUCT TYPE: Portable red-emitting laser module
LAMP TYPE: Directly-injected red laser diode
No. OF LAMPS: 1
BEAM TYPE: Very narrow spot; it's a laser, remember?
SWITCH TYPE: Pushbutton momentary on/off on barrel
CASE MATERIAL: Silver polished brass
BEZEL: Metal; has aperture (hole) for laser beam to emerge
BATTERY: 2x AAA cells
CURRENT CONSUMPTION: 151mA
WATER RESISTANT: No
SUBMERSIBLE: NO WAY HOZAY!!!
ACCESSORIES: End-cap set, laser safety goggles, presentation case, cylindrical gift tin, 10 pcs Wicked Lasers balloons
SIZE: 154mm L x 13mm Dia.
WEIGHT: 63.70g (2.250 oz.)
COUNTRY OF MANUFACTURE: China
WARRANTY: 90 days
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