Introduction

It might not be a surprise for our long time visitors that sometimes we go for a little bit different once in a while and that is also what we are doing today. Since we have looked in the past to some damn nice green lighting, well actually better known as lasers we are going once again to explorer an exciting product in this category. These lasers are popping up and around LAN parties and huge gaming events all over the world these days and are becoming more popular with gaming communities and special events. So we are looking once again at some laser technology and did partner with Dragon Lasers this time who actually contacted us to show their product and give it a run for its money. And yes, since we have been looking at the laser products now for the past two years, other companies have also started to work on an interesting line-up of colorful and powerful lasers applications and various new extreme products.

Now you might not know Dragon Lasers at all, as it is a young company founded in 2006. And although Dragon Lasers is a smaller company, they have gone already a long way in bringing some exciting lasers products on the market. As most lasers companies they are based in China and are a part of a larger joint venture company. That means that unlike most laser retailers, they manufacture the lasers that are being sold to their customers. Currently Dragon Lasers is the leading manufacturer of diode pumped solid state lasers in China and has a worldwide reputation for high quality low cost lasers. Next to that and to actually help the development of their various lasers products, Dragon Lasers cooperates and works with the largest optics and physics institute in China. To that extend it does show that this company has really started off very strong and has been able to design and manufacture lasers products with high quality.

Dragon Lasers manufactures and sells both portable lasers and OEM lasers. Their range of portable lasers ranges in power from less than 1mW to more than 400mW and includes the well known green Viper laser pointers and Hulk portable lasers, the blue Aurora laser pointer, new generation blue and green Spartan lasers and a number of less well known green, red, orange and infrared lasers. The OEM lasers range in power from just a few milliwatts to well over 10 watts and include every color in the visible spectrum as well as infrared and ultraviolet. Some of the applications for these OEM lasers are light shows, fluid analysis, gene tagging, flow cytometry, microscopy, holography and flow visualization. As you guessed, specializes in the most advanced DPSS laser technology, and doing so providing some of the most elite compact portable laser modules available.

Dragon Lasers are not modified, tweaked or hand tuned to reach their power ratings. Each laser is manufactured to the specifications for which they are rated. Absolutely no modifications or aftermarket tweaking has been performed on these pens. Unlike the competition, Dragon Lasers are built and designed to exacting specifications and offers one of the best warranty and return policies in the business. To compliment the laser products, Dragon Lasers offers a full one week satisfaction warranty. If for any reason a customer is not satisfied, they will be given a full refund with no questions asked. The second warranty is a 3 or 6 month warranty that covers customers for all manufacturing defects, faults and problems. The warranty also guarantees customers receive their portable lasers, if not delivered another laser will be shipped or a full refund will be given.

DPSS Function & Theory 101

Diode pumped solid state (DPSS) microchip lasers combines the beam quality of a gas laser and the small size and efficiency of a diode laser. DPSS lasers consist of a semiconductor diode laser, which is used to optically pump a small chip of lasing material, typically neodymium doped YAG. This generates a fundamental frequency. To obtain a certain frequency or color output such as green light, 532nm, a frequency doubling crystal is inserted into the laser cavity. Finally, beam conditioning optics are added to enlarge and collimate the beam. DPSS lasers have advantages in compactness and efficiency over other types, and high power DPSS lasers have replaced ion lasers and flash lamp pumped lasers in many scientific applications. Below is an example illustration of this process.

The diode fires a frequency of cohesive emissions of photons at a focusing lens which concentrates a beam of 808nm infra-red light into a YAG crystal increasing the 808nm wavelength infra-red light to the 1064nm spectrum. Continuing through the barrel the 1064nm wavelength of invisible light is conditioned again with the KTP crystal. The KTP crystal is comprised of synthesized Potassium titanyl phosphate minerals, grown into a synthetic crystal machined into a gemstone quality finish and acts as frequency doublers, facilitating optical parametric generation and optical beam conversion. The KTP crystal in effect will double the wavelength of 1064nm and convert the beam into the green spectrum of visible light at the frequency of 532nm. The wavelength of the laser diodes is tuned by means of temperature to produce an optimal compromise between the absorption coefficient in the crystal and energy efficiency.

At this point, the beam while still in the optical train, the beam is highly saturated with infra-red wavelength. To get rid of the destructive frequencies of infra-red, the beam is passed into an infra-red filter, filtering out the 808nm wavelength from the beam conversion process. Finally, once the 532nm light has been filtered from most of the 808nm infra-red, the beam is focused with a final optical lens as it completes its barrel journey and the resulting laser beam fires out of the aperture. The above product schematics illustrates the components of the Dragon Lasers DPSS green laser technology. Such DPSS lasers are very complicated and difficult products to manufacture and effective quality control is crucial, more so than for most other electronics. All Dragon Lasers, apart from IR lasers come with IR filter and none of the lasers are modified or have their power levels boosted.