Am sure you have seen lasers. Here's a supplier: BOB Laser Co. Ltd., a supplier from Hua Du District, Guangzhou, from Mainland China. BOB has set up three production lines: laser diode and photodetector packaging, optical transceivers and coupling devices. Main products developed by the supplier include semiconductor lasers, including short wavelength GaAs laser diodes and long wavelength InP laser diodes; photodetectors, including Si PIN and InGaAs PIN photodetectors; optical transceivers, with bit rates of 155 Mb/s, 622 Mb/s, 1.25 Gb/s, and 2.5 Gb/s, including 1×9 SC/ST/FC, bidirectional, GBIC, SFP and DVI; and semiconductor laser indicators, with dot, line, and crosslike spot shapes. According to company spokesperson Kevin Pang, BOB Laser is currently offering a range of laser diodes, as given below: • 808-nm laser diode 200/300/500/1000/2000/3000/5000 mW • 635-nm laser diode 10/20/30/50/80/100/150/200/300 mW • 980-nm laser diode 250/300/3000 mW • 405-nm laser diode 20/120/150/200 mW • IR laser lighter • Silicon PIN photodetector • 532-nm green laser module • 650-/635-nm red laser module • 473-/457-nm blue laser module My first reaction was to look at the blue laser modules, a topic raised early this year during the Annual Photonics Workshop 2010 in Cochin, India. I've blogged about that development earlier. Coming back to BOB Laser's blue laser modules, again, the range is huge, starting from 300- to 2000-mW, 450-nm blue laser modules to 2-W diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) blue laser module, and to 1-100-mw blue-on-violet dot laser module. There are a range of offerings within these! If one looks at the specs of the 300-2000-mW, 450-nm blue laser module, they would be 450 ±5 nm wavelength, 300-2000 mW output power, CW (continuous wave) as the working mode and quasi TE00 as the beam mode. BOB Laser also offers the Q-switched laser. The DPSS lasers are available for a range of industrial applications. The supplier's Q-switched DPSS lasers and high-power water-cooled lasers are widely used in laser process technology, such as rapid laser shaping, laser welding, laser cutting, laser drilling, laser marking, laser weight adjusting balance, laser etching, laser trimming, optical storage, laser cleaning, laser heat-treatment and surface treatment. It also offers the acousto-optic modulator (AOM) Q-switched laser in two varieties: air- and water-cooled. The air-cooled version starts from 1064 nm down to 256 nm, while the water-cooled version comes in two varieties: 1064 nm and 532 nm, respectively. See you next month! Pradeep