B&W Tek BWB-10-OEM - 473nm 10mW

That's pretty cool if you ask me.

Does anyone else's make that strange white noise hiss?

Meatball said:

That's pretty cool if you ask me.

Does anyone else's make that strange white noise hiss?

Click to expand...

Neither of mine make the noise... but statistically MarioMaster may have one.

-Trevor

No mine is completely silent. But IMO it's not a good idea to run it without the photo diode. Mine won't really stabilize (green LED turn off) unless the photo diode is attached. It helps the driver regulate the output much better. If you want more power just give the pot up to 3 turns clockwise to increase the current to the diode, at about 3 turns it's running about as bright as it would with the lens removed. I'm guessing that mine is about 15-20mW after all the optics with two turns clockwise. The driver does get pretty warm but he head still stays quite cool. I've run mine for >10 minutes straight without problems. It should reach themal equilibrium by then I think.

Also if the diode was pushed to the point where it would burn the crystals, wouldn't it burn the crystals right away? I'm just trying to judge whether or not it's even possible to burn them. With the pickoff lens removed it'll run at some max set current, regardless of the pot setting. I haven't read anywhere about anyone actually burning the crystals. You'll shorten then lifetime yeah, but I from what I've see I don't think it's possible to instantly cause it damage due to removing the lens.

It's a cheap laser to experiment with but still I don't want to really push it.

-Tony 800th post!

Meatball said:

That's pretty cool if you ask me.

Does anyone else's make that strange white noise hiss?

Click to expand...

could be noise from the switching supply on there... I wouldn't worry about it

Its actually coming from the head. I'm wondering if there a TEC in there, and its causing some materials to expand or shrink, making any fitting shift around a bit.

There is a TEC in there, two actually. You can see one of them in the pic in post #9, it's pretty big. Does the noise come and go or is it continuous? Does it happen when it's cold, hot?

Hmmm... my post count just dropped by 3...

-Tony

Just listened to it again.. its just very peculiar. I only hear it when the top cover is off. Its soft, but it can't be anything like a little temperature 'creak' of any kind. It just sounds like white noise, with a bit of a hiss. Maybe my ears are just sensitive to the UHF waves from space now?

That's odd. I've never heard of any diode or DPSS setup making noise. I would call it static electricity but if that were the case your diode would have been be long gone. Plus they don't use AC or high voltage. huh...?

-Tony

Maybe TECs makes some sort of noise when they are PWM controlled... I could see pulsed current making noise similar to AC..

its definitely possible, if the TEC is being driven by a PWM circuit (and it was a little loose or something) it could "hiss" similar to a switch mode psu

I will fire up my B&W tomorrow and see if I can hear a similar sound coming from the head and report back

I hadn't noticed any making noise, the units have two tecs (one for the diode and the other on the crystal set)

I ran mine today at work and also could not detect any noise coming from the head at all... so, dunno dude?

Has anyone measured the diode current?

I will do alot of tests once I buy and receive module from twhite828, he is out of home right now, propably on holidays so it may take a while

These lasers have 3-5W diode inside of them, You should feed it 3-4A

Insane, thats quite high powered one for only 10mW? Still, for this price you get:

-Atleast a 2W 808nm diode most likely with Fast Axis Collimation and some other corrective lenses.
-Propably 2 miniature TEC's (one for crystal and the other one for diode).
-Crystal set of ND:YAG or ND:YVO4 coated for 946nm and a LBO or B(i)BO or even something else to double frequency.

for only 93 bucks + 50 shipping is worth it, I hope so.