The circuitry probably has a delay at startup until the time of the laser diode firing. In particular if the laser pointer is one of the type that operates on 3V from two AA cells and if the laser diode actually requires a higher operational voltage then it is likey that there is some type of voltage converter circuit involved. Such converter starts when the battery voltage source is switched on to the laser diode assembly. It could very well take quite some time (into many milliseconds maybe) for the converter to charge up the output to a high enough level before the laser diode lights.

You would do well to experiment with a much lower switch on/off frequency where the Greed Laser does fire and then slowly increase the switching frequency till the laser quits working. This will get you calibrated as to just what kind of performace you could achieve with simple on/off battery input switching.

To support a faster switching rate may take more drastic measures. If the laser pointer does indeed have a voltage converter you could investigate the possibility to directly supply the higher voltage right to the LED module and then gate the actual drive to the laser diode on and off from this external voltage rail using a PMOS FET switching circuit.

Michael Karas