<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Size15s:
[QBAnyway of modifying a laser pointer (removing the collimated lens thing)
and using a flashlight reflector to focus a larger beam?[/QB]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
To put it simply, nope.
If you removed the lens from a diode laser, you would have an elliptical beam of approximately 8° by 27°. Too narrow for any substantial amount of the beam to be captured & redirected by the flashlight reflector.
Visible red laser diode, no lens, about 2 feet from the target.
The only feasable way to get a larger diameter beam out of a laser is to use a collimator, which is essentially a telescope used backwards. The beam enters the small lens (analogous to the "eyepiece") and exits the other end.
At this point, the beam is a larger diameter and has a lower angular divergence, so it is capable of being projected farther before it starts to degrade. A mathematical formula is used to determine how much improvement has been made, but I do not have it handy at the moment.
For lack of a ready-made collimator, the same effect can be achieved by firing your laser through the *** end of a pair of binoculars. For a gas laser like a helium neon type that has a true Gaussian energy distribution curve, angular divergence should be approximately 7X less than it was before, assuming a typical good quality binocular was used.
Things start to get a bit tricky here, so here is where I'll leave it.