PGL-III arrived today

[bootleg2go]

My PGL-III arrived today...I can hardly believe it got through. It spent the last 2 days at the customs office and required more paperwork than ShiftLock said they ever asked for in the past, they even called me yesterday to question me about what is was for and why that amount of power was required. Ask me no questions about how it got hrough and I'll tell you no lies. I used my LED and DVM to measure the power, I feel this method is fairly accurate as my 5mw leadlights tested at about 14ua which would be very close to 5 mw and after modding my two leadlights one was measuring 14mw and the other about 40mw. I'm not sure as to the stability of the PGL-III as the current was jumpping a little even thought I held it perfectly aligned. The max reading I got out of it was 913ua (326mw), but by watching the dvm over many seconds I think the average was about 845 or so(302mw) and the only way to get it below 800ua(285mw) was to tilt the LED over axis. The beam diameter looked to be about 1/2 the diameter of my leadlights. I'll be checking divergence over the weekend. All in all I'm very happy and think I got quite a bit more power than I paid for. After using for a bit, what came to mind was a quote from SpiderMan..."With great power comes great responsibility" I'm afraid of what this things will do if someone acts irrresponsibly with it, and that's bound to happen with so many being ordered. I think the days are really numbered on these getting through customs, I truely don't know how the non-FDA approved leadlights from WL are still getting into the US, maybe every package is not checked???
One more thing, when fedex delivered they didn't make me pay any customs duties or taxes??? Oh well, I'm not complaining.
As happy as I am about getting it, I'm not sure I'll be keeping it that long as I really think the WoW factor will soon wear off and it's a lot more powerful than I expected, and since I'm in the city and don't get to the country that often; I don't know how much use I will get out of it by only using it indoors. With my leadlights I can starpoint from the backyard and and maybe only my neighbors will see it, but with this thing, if I point it at the sky at night I think it will make a beam that can be seen from miles away. It's a real attention getter that's for sure.

Jack

 

[SuperBert]

pics pics pics! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/popcorn.gif

 

[bootleg2go]

Hi Superbert,
I'll try to get some pictures. The thing is no one is allowed to use my Canon 20D except me and I'm afraid to just turn the laser on and shoot it, but I'll have to fihure something out. The inside of our home has lots of windows and it's a sunny day, so it's very bright; so surprisingly the beam is not overly visible.
I did light a match from about 6 inches away, the match lit in about a second or less and I was able to burn a hole through a piece of light-blue construction paper in maybe 10 seconds or so...but it could have burned quicker if I wasn't shaking so much

Jack

 

[bootleg2go]

ps. how can I post pictures in a thread? do I have to the images up on a host and link to them?

Jack

 

[bootleg2go]

I was just examining the PGL-III and across the front of the apeture when I look at it at an angle I see the number 306 written in pencil; this matches very closely to the power measurement I got with my LED setup, but it could just be coincedence and it's really a serial number or something. Any comments from others with a PGL-III, does yours have this marking and if so does it seem to be about the same as the power output.

Jack

 

[LaserMod]

No markings on mine /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif I seem to remember one of the group buys had a number written on the top... who was it?

Bootleg, if you go to imageshack.us and upload your pics - they will give you some forum code to cut and paste into here or if you post them anywhere else you can display the image like this:

[.img]http://www.ur_website/your_pic.jpg[./img]

Remove the '.' from the start and end tags though - thats just to stop it from activating.

 

[bootleg2go]

I'll have to check imageshack out and put some pictures up soon. the image you posted is just a little box with an X in it, was it supposed to be something?

Jack

 

[LaserMod]

Fixed it lol. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[SuperBert]

all i see is the html text for the image?

 

[LaserMod]

There isn't an image /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif

But if you really want one /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[bootleg2go]

cool,
what kind of laser was that? did you use a flash to take that picture? What shutter speed/ aperture and film speed?

Jack

 

[LaserMod]

That was a modified Leadlight about 70mw. I just turn off the flash and leave my camera on auto mode. I'll have a look at the specific settings and get back to you...

It is a Canon A60.

 

[bg2vo]

Congratulations! It's great to have a 300+mW laser.

 

[bootleg2go]

Yes it's amazing that so much power can be packed into such a small space. This afternoon at work I called the guys down in the metrology lab (they are responsible for keeping all the test equipment in the company calibrated) and asked if there was any kind of equipment in the company to measure laser power. Come to find out the STW lab (servo track writer) lab did have a laser power meter. Called them up and they said I could borrow it for a few days, very cool. I went and picked it up and got to test my PGL-III with a calibrated meter. It's a coherent dual channel ultima lab master. The manual said it is accurate to +- 1%. I set it up to average the power over a 30 second period as well as find the min. and max. The average power output was 314.3mw, min. was 278mw, max. was 362mw with a standard deviation of 18.6
I'm really excited about 314mw average, but CNI should really do something about the output stability of their PGL-III, 18.6 for a standard deviation is just way to much. I read from another PGL owner or two that theirs were fairly unstable as well. It would really be nice to come up with a simple mod for these to and something like an APC circuit to increase the stability.

Jack

 

[Raccoon]

Aye. One of the things holding me back from buying one is the power issue. I wonder what could be causing it... heat? Perhaps the voltage regulation circuitry is cheaply designed?

bootleg, as an owner, you should really write CNI so we can hope for change.

 

[bootleg2go]

It's not really a voltage regulation issue that is causing this problem, it is just that without some kind of feedback mechanism like some pointers have, there will be instabilites. You can't really regulate the voltage cause the laser uses 3 volts and that is what the batteries supply. If either the battery voltage were above 3V or the laser ran on like 2volts, theres not much you can do. Max power out of a PGL-III can only be attained for maybe the 1st couple of minutes of use on a fresh set of batteries. The reason being is that the unit uses ~750ma of current and if you look at the voltage/current charts on the battery spec pages duracell or energizer, you will see that at 750ma the output voltage will start dropping below 3 volts after just a few minutes. So if you want to stay near the upper power range of the PGL-III you need to change the batteries after about 15-20 of use at the most. I just started setting them aside for use in the kids toys.

Jack

 

[LaserMod]

I agree, just started noticing power changes in my model. It goes bright - dim, bright - dim. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

Now after 5mins of use it goes into 'strobe' mode. Weird. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[Spec]

I dont own a PGL however I might have something to add here...

What amazes me about these things more than power/size ratio is the fact that they DONT mode hop at all.

Why not add a light feedback module and solar cell that alters the current to the diode like on some of the UK certified 1mW units?

It wouldnt be pretty, but it would work quite well.

 

[Kiessling]

An ignorant thought: wouldn't a constant current driver eliminate all those problems nicely?
bernhard

 

[LaserMod]

[ QUOTE ]
Kiessling said:
An ignorant thought: wouldn't a constant current driver eliminate all those problems nicely?
bernhard

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not the driver board thats the problem. Well it can be improved very little (and would need to move off batteries for a start).

The real problem is the complex process of converting IR to green. On the 110 Leadlights they have added a feedback module for the green output even though the IR diode already has a photo-sensor built-in - it is not used.

The reasons behind it are the same reasons we get rare occasions of Leadlights putting out more than others. The crystals in these things are not perfect and never will be for a reasonable price - even in the PGL-III's.

For the most efficient conversion to take place - both the diode and MCA set have to be perfectly aligned, of good quality and the temperarture kept at a constant.

The IR diodes tend to warp around 808nm and go higher and lower of their specified output as the laser warms up - this in conjunction with the heating of the crystals and alignment affects the conversion and causes the flickering/jumps of power.

The only alternative is to measure the final green output and feed that back into the circuit. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif