Voltage surge?

I have a Pocket Mini 6x with a flex drive that I have been using for a while, so it has a few hours on it. Recently it had a strange tendency to not turn on unless the barrel of the host was unscrewed a tiny bit. Then it would turn on and work fine, and I could screw the barrel back in. In attempting to diagnose this problem, I inadvertently left the switch on when I disassembled the laser and upon reassembly, the diode turned on for a split second and then shut off. It would not light up again after that. Is it possible the diode died due to a voltage surge?

Well you gave insufficient info for any reliable help, but I am betting that screwing and unscrewing the head might severed a wire, or made a short somewhere, frying out the driver.
If nothing but diode would be fried, you would see a faint violet glow (LED). If nothing is coming out of the lens, then you need to check out the connections inside.

Let me try and be clearer:

The head with the diode and driver was not unscrewed, rather the part that holds the battery was. There are no wires in this section of the host, so I don't think that's the issue. I was able to see a faint glow coming from the diode at first, but now there's nothing. I am pretty sure the diode is dead, I just want to be sure that the driver is not damaged, since I thought the Flex drives protected against voltage spikes

I cannot exactly picture your setup...

Can you post some pictures?
Disconnecting and connecting batteries is the same thing as turning your laser on/off. Switch is the only thing between batteries and driver.

Although I could be wrong, I would need to see how it looks like before I can make any certain assumptions.

I will be partially disassembling the laser to see if the driver is bad (i hope not) and will take some pictures then. I know that the flexdrives need to be connected to a diode or test load prior to being turned or damage to the driver can result. Is it possible that powering a drive connected to a dead diode could also damage the driver? I want to make sure its only the diode that is bad before I connect a new one.

FlightLevel350 said:

I will be partially disassembling the laser to see if the driver is bad (i hope not) and will take some pictures then. I know that the flexdrives need to be connected to a diode or test load prior to being turned or damage to the driver can result. Is it possible that powering a drive connected to a dead diode could also damage the driver? I want to make sure its only the diode that is bad before I connect a new one.

Click to expand...

No, dead diode provides same resistive load as alive one, no worries there.

Once we get some pictures, we will be able to help. :beer: until then

First thing to ALWAYS check with a flexdrive is the battery. Maybe you just discharged the battery while working with it.

Second is to test the laser WITHOUT disassembling it. Disassembling a laser without knowing how can break the laser

It sounds like either a battery or a connection issue.

If the "short" or break is in the tail cap, then the driver and diode are probably still OK. Screwing it together with the switch on is just the same as turning on the laser with the switch. It does NOT cause a "surge."

However, if the actual "loose connection" is because something was/is loose where the contact disc screws into the head, you may have some problems with the laser itself.

There is an easy test for this. Tape some wires to the battery. Make sure that the battery is fully charged. Hold the negative wire to the threads or to the heat sink. Touch the positive wire to the center of the contact disc. Does the laser light?

Peace,
dave

Well, in the course of testing the laser, I found that the battery I was using was discharged. (Thanks Dave) I tried a fully charged battery without success. I then carefully disassembled the laser. I checked the driver with a test load and confirmed the driver was working. I'm still not sure why the diode died, but it might have been a weaker diode or some random thing

I have a 100mw bluray that i purchased off of hightechdealz and it has the rckstr micro drive on it already. And it quit working after only 15min of use and i only had it on for 1min at a time. Mine did the same thing that your seem to do. It would lite up really dimmly like a low powered led and then it would not come on at all. I just ordered a new diode and am waiting for it so i can install it and see if it works. I hope you get your figured out and get it back up and running. Good luck.