Demonstrating how a laser leveler with a line-generating lens looks on 1/2” acrylic. As AlexP has showed, the laser can get extremely close to the acrylic and will not blob until you are physically touching the surface.

Will be creating a LLP on a 24"x36"x1/4" sheet of acrylic shortly.

That’s very bright!
Cool!

How much did that cost?

Vlado - 27 June 2008 08:48 AM

How much did that cost?

Just a simple laser leveler, had one lying around the house. I think they are about ~$30 from Sears.

I bought one a while back for €7,- at some cheap shop including a mini tripod here in the netherlands (at marskramer, and €15 at praxis but that one doesnt have the tripod), downside is that the red laser is 650nm .. which is not in the IR spectrum and therefor not picked up by the webcam :(
lasers are only 1 wavelength, so no IR light unless the laser ifself is IR 780nm and up :(

Helza1 - 27 June 2008 11:28 AM

I bought one a while back for €7,- at some cheap shop including a mini tripod here in the netherlands (at marskramer, and €15 at praxis but that one doesnt have the tripod), downside is that the red laser is 650nm .. which is not in the IR spectrum and therefor not picked up by the webcam :(
lasers are only 1 wavelength, so no IR light unless the laser ifself is IR 780nm and up :(

Yep, it’s not usable, it was just a simulation of what the IR laser will do. I just wanted to see it to believe it before I install the real IR laser.

Thats really cool. The blobs are so bright. I hope the IR laser is just as good as this. BTW where you get an IR laser? I was looking for one a while back couldn’t find any.

Damn , the laser leveler is so cheap there. I’ve only found a handfull of shops that sell them and all of them are over 150$.

Another just visible test, now on the actual acrylic i’ll be using.

Gw

For UK people:  http://www.screwfix.com/prods/69160/Hand-Tools/Lasers-Levelling/Lasers/Finishing/Mini-Laser-Level

£7, battery powered, and if you config right I reckon it will work. I’m ordering…

Hey guys, there’s also this:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5928

I bought 4 and replaced the Red Lasers with some IR lasers from DVD Roms and presto! Focused IR line! Much cheaper than a laser leveler too.

I changed the on-board circuit to give the IR Laser much more power and the results are great! I will post some videos soon.

Thanks to AlexP for the idea

Just wondering, as far as i know DVD players don’t use an infrared wavelengths but they use +/-650nm.. CD players use 780nm which is in the IR spectrum.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#Technology

I tryed using my old cd burner/dvd reader also and replacing the laser diode in my laser leveler with it. However i was unable to extract it laser diode fully. The laser was fixed to a metal part which i couldn’t remove without braking it..
I was expecting CD burner and DVD reading laser to be 2 seperate ones.. apperently it wasn’t and instead i got red light from it :(.. but before i could test it i already killed it

The Burner I got my IR lasers from has 2 Laser diodes (Pioneer DVR-112). One for CD(~780nm) and one for DVD (~650nm). Using a dremmel I carefully grinded away the aluminum casing from the CD (IR) laser diode and that’s it!

I end up with this:

From this:

Obviously there is some visible light emitted from the diode, however the IR is more than enough for the job.

Those red lasers are great, I ordered 6.  I think I can make them work without any conversion at all, and the bonus is that your fingers will glow read when you touch the surface.

:D

Hi,

i wonder if 5mW lasers aren’t bad for your eyes?

or is there no problem because of the light is spread by the lense?

whould one (or two, in facing corners) 1mW IR lasers do the job?

i’m thinging about buying this 1mW (maybe two of them)
http://www.laserfuchs.de/lasershop/product_info.php/products_id/22/cPath/12/infrarotlaser/infrarotlaser-780nm-1mw---lfd780-1-3(8x23).html

or this (5mW) one:
http://www.laserfuchs.de/lasershop/product_info.php/products_id/23/cPath/12/infrarotlaser/infrarotlaser-780nm-5mw---lfd780-5-3(8x23).html

And use this lense for spreading the point to a line:
http://www.laserfuchs.de/lasershop/product_info.php/products_id/67/cPath/9/laser-zubehoer/laser-linien-generator.html

(It’s a german shop)

Do you have any suggestions about this ones?

Edit:
@Larky: do you think you can detect the red blobs even when there is a red image projected (or shown by the tft) to the surface? this whould be realy cool as for 1 you could have the nice effect of glowing fingertips and for 2 you could avoid looking into invisible laser light

Problem is that the red laser doesn’t give out any Infrared laser, so you can not put an Infrared filter on your webcam as its not infrared it will be receiving..
This means the webcam will see all lightsm including your beamer/display which could also include red light and now you would get ‘fake’ blobs..