803t Broken window casualty

Despite being extremely gentle in extracting it, the window on my 803t broke...
It was doing pretty well so long as I would rotate it and tap it on something to get the window to jostle back in place, though it was annoying that it would have a partially obscured beam with interference patterns etc...

So, instead of taking GooeyGus up on his generous offer of a free can-opening service, I was impatient and decided to dremel it...
The dremeling went smoothly, and I was pretty sure I didn't break anything in the process, but when I re-aixized it and fired it up I only got a tiny dot, surrounded by an image of the die itself (I wish I took a pic of this, it's really feeble, <5mW, with like a rectangle around the dot)...

Frustrated, I un-aixized it again and inspected it visually...

You might not be able to tell from this pic, but a shard of glass has wedged itself between the cathode and the left side of the die... judging by the shape of the die, it looks like it's also chipped off some of the die itself.

here I've highlighted the damage...

in green you see the shard of glass..

and in red you see the unusual, non-rectangular shape of the die.

OUCH ! If you have a jeweler's loop available, and some really fine pointed forceps, you may be able to extract that....if you don't want to - I would love to take a whack at it, just pay postage

Or blow it out with some canned air

I don't know that removing the glass will help any... there's nothing in the way of the beam, yet it comes out very dim, with an outline of what I assume is the die itself... I'm guessing the glass chipped a part of the gallium nitrate (or whatever), permanently damaging the diode.

See if you can get any SUPER close up pics ?

here you go, this is about as closeup as I can get with this loupe...

my camera actually has no macro mode, I'm holding a lens up to it... the only other lenses I have laying around are from aixiz modules, and they're really, really hard to photograph with.

note that the glass shard is invisible in this pic, but I assure you it's still there.

pseudolobster said:

here you go, this is about as closeup as I can get with this loupe...

my camera actually has no macro mode, I'm holding a lens up to it... the only other lenses I have laying around are from aixiz modules, and they're really, really hard to photograph with.

note that the glass shard is invisible in this pic, but I assure you it's still there.

Click to expand...

Maybe when GooeyGus stops in he can compare his "open can" diode to yours to compare the shape of the crystal, placement of the wires, etc.

Maybe the shape of the crystal is the reason why these diodes put out an elongated beam.

Peace,
dave

glass fragment highlighted in green.

for some reason this type of glass is really hard to focus on, it's practically invisible in all my pics.

I'll try to get some beam shots tonight... let this serve as a reminder to all, to be extremely careful when harvesting these diodes... the windows will break if you so much as sneeze on them.

I'm thinking possibly the static buildup, heat or just the vibration while dremeling may have killed it. I had something similar happen, which I took a couple snips to the can to just open the top, got the glass out no problem, but when I went to try, it was dim :-/

I just took a look at one of my open can diodes, and something definitely looks wrong on yours. The part highlighted in red should be a rectangular shape, and have a uniform finish. It looks like the back half of the rectangle part on yours isn't 'shiny' like it should be, if that makes sense. My guess is that the dremel launched a glass fragment against the die, causing catastrophic damage.

rkcstr said:

I'm thinking possibly the static buildup, heat or just the vibration while dremeling may have killed it. I had something similar happen, which I took a couple snips to the can to just open the top, got the glass out no problem, but when I went to try, it was dim :-/

Click to expand...

I always use an ESD wrist strap and a grounded soldering iron, so it shouldn't have been static... I was holding the can with my fingers while dremeling, so I'm sure it wasn't the heat from grinding, and I always set my iron to 600-650 degrees fahrenheit and never leave it on more than 5 seconds, so I don't think it was soldering heat either... seems it was just bad luck and a stray shard of glass.

GooeyGus said:

I just took a look at one of my open can diodes, and something definitely looks wrong on yours. The part highlighted in red should be a rectangular shape, and have a uniform finish. It looks like the back half of the rectangle part on yours isn't 'shiny' like it should be, if that makes sense. My guess is that the dremel launched a glass fragment against the die, causing catastrophic damage.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that confirms my suspicions..

I'm not thrilled to hear that, but that's pretty much what I expected... seems I'm cursed when it comes to lasers... despite my best efforts in taking all the necessary precautions, I always kill lasers one way or another. I think I just killed an 18x burner diode, since I soldered the positive pin, then when I went to solder the gnd I rotated the can though the pin stood still... it won't turn on now and I suspect I broke one of those tiny wires inside. :-[