We all know about the classic red laser pointers that you can buy at the dollar store. I've recently built a high powered Blu-Ray laser on my spare time. It can burn paper, pop balloons, write on glow in the dark objects, light matches and much more. Its of the 405nm *nano meters* so its violet, not actually blue which is around 473 nm's, thus having a lot of people being mislead into thinking blu-ray is actually blue.
I built my laser from an Xbox HD DVD Drive which is the external one. It runs on 3 AAA's at around 5 volts.
It's much stronger then the laser pointers that you get at the dollar store.
Its power measured in Milli-watts is around 90-100mW. I'm running the driver for it at a safe 110 milli-Amps so the laser diode will last longer.
I have videos of me playing around with a glow in the dark board and burning some matches.
<glow board
< lighting some matches
If you wanna build a laser just like mine check out my guide on my site.
http://www.chowscorner.com
