Color Lasers and Side Emitting Fiber Optic

[jkaras]

Hello Everybody,

We do custom designing LED light fixtures with and without fiber optics. We would like to take some of our concepts and use them with lasers, because we think we can get brighter results.

Our latest design consists of 3mm side emitting plastic fiber optic cable. We would like to inject laser light into the fiber to illuminate the entire fiber cable. Coupling is probably key as we do not want to melt the fiber. We have done some experimenting with 5mW lasers, but we would like to be able to make it significantly brighter. We were told that anything above 5mW would give us melting issues.

Can we go brighter than 5mW?
Any sources for coupling ready made parts that would allow us to go brighter?
Has anybody on here ever done this and what was your experience?
How long can light emitting lasers stay on before they exceed there usage and burn out?
Can we run them 24 hours a day?

Thank you in advance!

 

[jkaras]

Our experiments with cheap laser pointers were unfortunately unsatisfactory
due to low quality lasers used in those devices.

It would be great to get help from this list on how to get started without
spending thousands of dollars.

Should we source laser diodes from an electronics supplier like DigiKey with
or without driver circuits and tweak the voltage to test different
brightness levels?
Has anybody on this list ever done this and what was your experience?

We have a decade of experience with LEDs, driver circuits, DMX control, etc
but are new to lasers (see

http://www.paramedia.net).

Any advice would be highly appreciated.

Thank you for your help in advance!

 

[MacGyverS2000]

This would be a relatively inexpensive test to perform in the grand scheme of things...

But I think you need to consider what's different between the beam coming out of an LED and that of a laser before you waste many fruitless hours on the idea. There's a reason why a mW-level laser can transmit for miles through fiber, whereas a W-level LED won't go for more than a few hundred feet.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[jkaras]

The difference is the laser illuminates the fiber over a much greater distance than an LED. We want to see as much of the fiber illuminated as possible. Distance and brightness IS our goal which is why we are trying to go in this direction.