O-Like 200 MW Blue Pointer, Mostly Dead after 30 seconds.

I got my 200 MW Blue laser today. Before it died after 30 seconds of use, it burnt as well as the old standby 200mw red burning laser for 49 bucks we all remember.

The dot was clearly not a circle, but a rectangle unfocused.

It appears to use a black Aixis lens module, like the red burning laser of yore.

Anyhow, now I am waiting to hear back from O-Like. My laser, with fully charged batteries barely lights up bright enough to call it a Blue Indicator LED.

Has anyone ever seen this happen? I had 50MW green lasers I bought on Ebay do that to me, I figured it was because they were over driving the laser modules in them.

Blue or bluray? What's the wavelength and do you have a link? What batteries were you using?

If you're sure they are the right batteries then try some different ones as they sometimes can fail too, even though they show a correct voltage when tested with a DMM.

M

405 nm
I am an electrician with enough background in electronics to accurately detail a failure of a product, so yeah the batteries are not dead.
I also checked with other batteries, and these batts in my Red 200mw laser work just fine.

O-Like responded in just a couple of hours to replace or refund.

Not sure which I'll choose yet.
I've found Rayfoss with a 405nm 300w for $160 with a 60s duty cycle and a 445nm 1W with a 30s duty cycle for $205. I own the Rayfoss RF532-200mW-FMK(IR filtered) an have been 100% happy with it.
http://www.rayfoss.com/productn.asp?ArticleID=59
If I go to $200 dollars I may as well go all out and get the Spyder3 1W at $300, as I know it's going to be heat sinked much better and I can run it at lower power with the smart switch.

Anyhow it was this O-Like unit:
200mW blu-ray torch/adjustable/focusable [OL-405-200-T] - $105.99 : Welcome to O-Like.com, Your source for laser products
This uses the same housing as the "new Style 200MW Red" at Deal Extreme.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22933
The batteries were tested in an old style 200MW and proved to be just fine.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11315

The issue is odd, it still heats up over the 30 seconds and the case gets very warm, just the Laser LED gets barely bright enough to even project a dot, focused I would estimate that it is 1/1000mw power, in a dark room its hard to see the dot. I kid you not you could look down the lense at the LED, and with my glasses w/ lenses OD4 of 200-540nm , looking at the LED you clearly can see the anode and cathode wires inside going to the LED lighting surface and the small rectangular surface that is barely lighting up. Reverse collimation you actually can focus right in on the inside of the LED. It's actually pretty cool. You wouldn't be able to do that if it really had 200mw of light actually burning bright.

It came with a document that said not to run it more then 2 to 3 minutes at a time. So even my 30 seconds of use doesn't seem to be the issue. O-Like claims it could have happened in shipping. I think the LED is at fault. That it just burned the majority of itself out, or it fractured the lighting surface, as it still partially lights up and only a portion is lighting up.

Also, the dot wasn't circular when focused, it had an extreme comet tail coming off the small collimated dot which may have been a fracture on the LED lighting surface.

Anyhow, O-Like is providing replacement or refund, so it's not too big of a deal for me, except for the shipping time, I guess I can wait.

It's likely this was 6x diode, (laser diode, or LD, not LED. Very different animals), being pushed and it has now LEDed, (as we say). The current passing is the same but... No more lasing. That's why it still gets hot.

It would have been odd for this to happen to a 445nm, (blue), as these are well capable of over 1W and surviving. Now that it's confirmed as 405nm, (bluray or violet. Not blue), this is not a huge surprise. 170-190mA at most for these diodes giving somewhere around 200mW so this diode was probably living on the edge to start with, although faulty diodes are not unheard of.

O-like is trusted round here so either choice you make, you will end satisfied. The customer service is great, (as shown by the quick response and solution).

Good luck with whichever option you choose.

If you're an electrical engineer... Get and build one yourself!!!

M

I finally got refunded for the failed device.

It took 6 weeks to process my refund.

Apparently some companies have better business practices on the return side. They took a long time, but I don't think they are a problematic company because of it, I believe that they are just really that slow.

Glad to hear you got it sorted....in the end!.

As morgan said tho, if you have the background you say have, get building! so much more fun.

Oh, and cheaper