A couple questions
Posted: Fri 22 Apr, 2022 2:22 pm
While I am not new to electronics, I am very new to working with lasers. I was recently looking at a few videos about laser engravers and the difference between wattage ratings - actual use vs optical power. Very interesting stuff. Then I saw another video about a robot that was killing weeds on a farm by burning with a laser, and this peaked my interest because I operate a small farm and I can already build path finding robots. So next comes the weed killing laser part and that is where my questions come in here.
First, how much optical power do you think would really be necessary to burn a small plant? Mostly I am thinking about this for my driveways to kill off the weeds that grow down the middle and along the edges. Right now my uncle manages these weeds using chemicals like glyphosate and I am hoping to build a chemical free way to kill off these plants.
Second, is it possible to take several lower wattage laser diodes and combine their beams to achieve this effect, rather than buying a single higher wattage laser diode?
Third, when I look at lasers intended for engravers/cutters many of them have what looks like quite large heatsinks. How much heat dissipation capacity is required? For my purpose the unit would be outside in the summer heat, would a passive heatsink still be enough? Or would it be beneficial to rig up a liquid cooling system like is used for gaming and other high performance computers?
First, how much optical power do you think would really be necessary to burn a small plant? Mostly I am thinking about this for my driveways to kill off the weeds that grow down the middle and along the edges. Right now my uncle manages these weeds using chemicals like glyphosate and I am hoping to build a chemical free way to kill off these plants.
Second, is it possible to take several lower wattage laser diodes and combine their beams to achieve this effect, rather than buying a single higher wattage laser diode?
Third, when I look at lasers intended for engravers/cutters many of them have what looks like quite large heatsinks. How much heat dissipation capacity is required? For my purpose the unit would be outside in the summer heat, would a passive heatsink still be enough? Or would it be beneficial to rig up a liquid cooling system like is used for gaming and other high performance computers?
