I’ve had lasers as an hobby for a while. As a member of a known laser community, I can assure you that WickedLasers has VERY BAD REPUTATION and currently the most powerful handheld laser pointer you can have is the Hercules from LaserGlow with a typical peak output of 500mW. Your laser has an peak output power of 300mW if I am not wrong. I’m not 100% sure but I can tell by that video that your laser is not even close to 300mW. Also WickedLasers is a known scamming laser company, sending out underpowered laser units to people who pay WAY OVERPRICE than they actually should. Trusted companies like Laserglow, Optotronics, Novalasers or Dragonlasers always send out up to spec or even more. They are known to send out units with up to 30mW higher peak output than they are sold as, and average output is often up to 20mW more than they are sold as. Also another thing is that WickedLasers’ customer support is awful. Yet another good thing to say about the other laser companies I mentoined: They are MUCH CHEAPER than WickedLasers overpriced lasers. I can’t stress this enough but this video is providing false information to us who watch them.
Another thing, use something to mark the balloons with black spots, same goes with the matches. Black absorbs heat much better than light colors (in this case, a pink balloon will reflect most of the heat). So, next time, use a colored balloon with a black spot, or eventually use a black balloon. I can use my cheap 50mW green laser pointer (for $20 shipped to my door) to pop a balloon in under two seconds with no problems aslong as the spot I am pointing at is black.

Other than that, this video is well produced and edited. Another good thing is that you used safety glasses. I have seen videos about high powered laser pointers with people not using safety glasses, not smart, it will fry your eyes. Keep on working but make sure you provide information that is not false in the future.

~ My two cents, and stay off WickedLasers.

Thanks, have a nice day.
Kind regards
Chris

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2008/12/12/addonics-intros-a-55-nas-adapter-for-usb-storage-drives/

No discount code, but thanks. :)

DVD writable drives (you can find a new internal one for $40) use ~225 milliwatt red lasers, which is just about as powerful as the laser featured in this video! The instructions to remove the diode from a DVD-R drive and wire it to a battery pack (and place it in a hand-held shell from a flashlight) are available online. Google is your friend!

Is that the same shirt that the kid in Voyagers wore? Here is a sample screenshot.

http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/t-v/voyagers-cov.jpg

:)

Keep up the great work!

But Cali, you should have told us that this bad boy is $1700!! Not exactly something that most of us will be jumping out the door to buy just to play around with.

Just wanted to say I was always a little sceptical about the videos I saw on youtube with the green lazers but this was just cool wicked brief!!!