DISQUS

Well, this line belongs in the English Grammar Hall of Shame:
"Using a 110 volt - 2-5 amp current and placed in the CrustaStun, the crustacean will experience an interruption..."

Anyone allowing a lobster to use 2 to 5 amps of house current needs parenting lessons, that's for sure!

As for the scream myth, it's boiled watervapor escaping through small orifices, usually happening only when the cook heaves the lil' armored bugger into a pot of already-boiling water.

I agree with Larry Niven: anything that works that hard to protect itself deserves not to be eaten. (On the other hand, anyone who, in the 21st century, thinks eating meat is mentally ill is suffering from delusions of adequacy and needs more red meat in his/her diet.)

OK, correction: I see where, at the end, I said the 100mw red laser was cooler than the 15mw green one, and I meant the 95mw green one. After all, it's CW. It's only $199 instead of $395. It may just save holography from the discontinuation of all red-sensitive emulsions (well on its way), and there are a lot of coated optics intended for 635-650nm region. So I see how Vinsm took me to believe the review was for a 15mw laser.

Vinsm, I know the review was on a 95mw laser. I also know how dangerous a 15mw laser is, and how much more so a 95mw laser is. Likewise, although I was going on old information, my comments about data on duty cycle going thin around the 15mw level at the wicked lasers site was not based on the power of the reviewed laser, but rather on the lack of information in the mid-power range on the wicked site when I was last there.

Not one of my comments is based on which model was reviewed, nor does your site answer any of my questions. It is at best what it claims to be, for people who are new to lasers. It is also painfully short of honesty about safety. Class IIIb lasers are not safe if they flash across your eye, nor are they safe if you look into the cavity (ie shine the beam in your eye) for less than a second. The class system is simple:
Class I: totally enclosed beam, no chance of exposure whatsoever.
Class II: exposure of less than .25 seconds is not damaging (human aversion response, blinking, will block it before it can dump enough energy into your eye to damage it), but longer exposures have increasingly great chance to cause damage.
Class IIIa (1 to 5mw red, may be lower for green because of the eye's greater sensitivity): do not expose eyes to the beam, do not shine the beam into someone else's eye, period. Mirror reflections (called specular, ie off anything shiny) will cause damage if they enter the eye.
Class IIIb (5mw to 500mw red) _will_ cause damage even if viewed via diffuse reflection (ie, off a matte surface). These babies are _dangerous_ to eyes.

So your claim on your site that you don't need goggles outside with a Class IIIb laser is incorrect, misleading, and can lead to lawsuits from people who take your advice. Banging a 95mw laser off chrome on a nearby car can burn holes in not just your retina, but other people's, for instance. (You may want to modify those claims.)

What was I actually saying in my post?

Here's some insight: I have a laser I've been using for holography. It puts out 2.1mw at 650nm (red.) It needs to warm up for about 5 minutes to be stable enough to take an exposure. At that kind of power level, we're talking about 3 minutes for an exposure, which means that the on part of the duty cycle has to be at least 8 minutes.

Lasers optimized for power tend to overheat quickly. That's why the cooling time is necessary. But that extra current also makes them more susceptible to mode hopping. Mode hopping is the enemy of holography. So while the greater power output at 95mw might seem to be the solution to the long exposure time (especially if the film or plate emulsion is sensitive more to green than red), the dangers of over-drive instabilities make the usefulness of these lasers a big question. A big question, I might add, that no one has seen fit to answer. Something that might have made a review of this laser something more than another gee-whiz-bang repetition of Wicked's own copy about lighting matches and cutting black tape.

Also, not to be rude or anything, but wouldn't you be more credible if you admitted to people the reasib they can get a discount through your 'FAQ' site?

I will never understand why Wicked gives these lasers to the people they do, for reviews. No disrespect meant (honestly) but it is literally impossible for a person without an optics background (and who hasn't been properly trained to handle lasers) to understand what a 15mw Green laser is/does/can do.

For instance, there is no mention of _why_ a green laser looks so much brighter than a red laser of the same power. (It's because the green color of these lasers is right at the sensitivity peak of the human eye, while the red of most laser pointers is way off on the 'skirt' of the bell-shaped curve, ie, the eye is very very insensitive to red by comparison to green.) That increased sensitivity is not just for seeing the beam/spot, it is for damaging your eyes, too. The reason the match needs to be dark red to burn with a 15mw green laser is that red objects reflect red and absorb green. (so a 15mw red laser would have little chance lighting the dark red match that this laser can.) The retina of your eye is red. That means that it absorbs the energy from a green laser much more readily than energy from a red laser.

So what does this review actually say? Nothing that the verbiage and videos on the Wicked site say. It pops balloons, lights (red) match heads, and cuts electrician's tape. All duplicate info. There approaches some information where the 5mile beam is around 1' across. (You can calculate the miliradians of beam spread from this, which could be useful to compare to other lasers.) How much laser power is in a 1' spot compared to the focused spot at 1'? Is it still eye-dangerous? Why? Why not? All missing.

Any kind of real safety info is missing, as well. This laser is class3B. It's illegal and dangerous in the hands of John Q Public, because it is not eye-safe and can't be made eye-safe without protective lenses or light-blocks. The red pointers are lower powered, have less effect on eye tissues, and tend to cause the eye to blink (human aversion response), limiting exposure to a quarter-second. This laser, if you look into the cavity, can cause damage before you can blink. Additionally, reflections from even mildly diffuse objects (let alone mirror reflections) will hurt your eyes. In fact, staring at the spot when it reflects off a piece of white copier/printer paper (which all now brag that they are whiter than ever!!!) can damage your eye. This makes you one lucky feller, David, if you have managed to avoid getting hurt.

Now, here's an interesting sidelight: a laser like this, in the hands of an amateur or professional holographer, edges on the holy grail. Why? Because laser diodes now have the capacity to make a very coherent beam (absolutely needed for holography) without mode hopping, without a lot of heavy control (read expensive) electronics and cooling systems. Has one of these lasers been reviewed (anywhere, not just here) by someone who understands how useful it could be? Holography = Art, so it's not just techy stuff I'm complaining about here: properly handled, a powerful diode laser can make holograms of large spaces possible, where the old HeNe's couldn't begin either to illuminate such spaces, nor was their coherence length long enough to get past the plate, let alone off the table! (We're talking 2-3cm maximum coherence length, therefore depth of field, for HeNe lasers, on average, and 3-5meters for diodes.)

You mention 10 minutes of peak output. You don't mention the duty cycle. How long can you keep this laser on? I believe that it is around the 15mw lasers that Wicked gets real short on documentation about duty cycle...but then, at slightly higher powers, admits that you can't keep them on longer than 10-20 seconds at a time without long cooling periods in between. (Not so useful for long exposures!)

It'd be nice if people reviewing these things were in a position to get over the gee-whiz factor of lighting matches (hey, I don't need a $300 laser to light a match, do I?) and talk about some of the real uses these units might have.

Especially, before the folk who think burning their retinas out is 'cool' get the darn things so banned that no one who knows what to do with them can even get them anymore!

PS: the red 100mw laser is a lot cooler than this stupid 15mw green one. It's only $200 and is CW: you don't have to turn it off at all. Tell your sponsors that I'd _love_ to review one of _those_ for them, especially if I can keep (or get a hefty discount) on the review model!

I am, for reference, a Photonics student in college, after a 33year career as an electronics technician and designer. So this rant is not without basis.