best place to find a laser diode

[Eduardo]

ok I'm new here and I was hoping enough of you out there know what devices have the most powerful laser diodes. the dvd burner laser interests me but I don't want to sacrifice such a nice device to do that. but I do work around allot of old electronics which are at my disposal literally so I wondered if a laser from a laser printer could be powerful enough to burn.

 

[Boston_George]

They will achieve "burning" but they are IR and cannot be seen with your eyes = HAZARD

 

[bleufan]

Cd burners are IR, DVD burners are visible red. There are plenty of instructables on the internet. for making a buring red laserpointer from the diode out of a DVD burner.
Buying a complete laserpointer is probably expensive at these power levels. Buying a module is/may be cheaper, but not much.
A bare diode is very cheap, but easily fried. So if you're adventurous, buy a diode and solder a power supply for it. They REALLY need a good powersupply, those things are sensitive.
Anyway, you can look it up at the internet, ebay, stuff like that. I can point some sites I found, if you like.