NUBM07E 465nm Mace of Doom build

Since I had some spare money left and already had a host, I decided to buy the NUBM07E diode and make this build. I had already built the laser entirely before I thought of taking pictures of it, so I disassembled it for as far as I could to take the pictures.


First off I rebuilt the switch from a 1.4A switch to a 5A one. I had to cut off a small part on the inside of the green part and about 1 to 2mm on the sides of the new switch as it was bigger and longer. After that I put it together and luckily everything fit.




I then needed to find a good way to heatsink the driver. At first I was going to glue it to the back of the large heatsink with arctic alumina, but if I glued it on that way, I wouldn't likely ever be able to get it off without ruining the driver. So I thought of a better way, and came up with this:




I took the back of another aixiz module and fit the driver in it. As soon as I knew it would fit, I put a thick layer of epoxy around all the sides on the driver, and put it in the back half of the module. After that I kept adding epoxy on top until I couldn't fit in any more.




Once that had been done I soldered everything together and assembled the build as seen here:




Here you can see the driver inside the module sticking out of the heatsink. It's a pretty tight fit, so once I fully pushed it into the heatsink, it wouldn't slide back out unless I wanted it to.








And that was it. I turned it on and was amazed by the bright beam and beautiful color it had. It's easily the brightest laser I've ever owned.


Some pictures of the finished build:











And now the beamshots!

:gj: +rep

Nice build and smart diode choice. +REP
What was the driver set at and are those 14500 cells? Glad you bought good batteries for it.

Pman said:

Nice build and smart diode choice. +REP
What was the driver set at and are those 14500 cells? Glad you bought good batteries for it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the +rep guys! Still owe you a rep pete, but I'll have to spread some more first. I had DTR set the driver at 4000mA and am using 18650 cells. I only use these Nitecore cells for this build, because they have a high discharge rate. I do have a few more 18650 batteries, but those are of less quality and mostly being used in lower powered builds.

I plan on correcting the beam with optics in the future, but I'll first have to figure out what exactly I will be using and if it will be possible to add it to this build. If I were to add optics to this build, then I'd most likely have to mount the optics in front of the host, so that'll be a bit of a challenge.

This color is so awesome to expand the beam with, put one in front of it like I did mine, looks like it might be about the right diameter to fit!



Although the pointed focus cap would need to come off of yours so its small diameter output won't block the beam being adjusted out of focus, I think. You could slap some corrective optics in front of the diode module that way too, as it would all be enclosed inside the helical focuser but things would get complex as I think the expansion would then need to come after the corrective optics, not before, unless you put a simple plano-convex cylinder lens in front of the aixiz module output like I did to expand the slow axis to twice its width, this worked well for me with this particular diode on mine.

Alaskan said:

This color is so awesome to expand the beam with, put one in front of it like I did mine, looks like it might be about the right diameter to fit!



Although the pointed focus cap would need to come off of yours so its small diameter output won't block the beam being adjusted out of focus, I think. You could slap some corrective optics in front of the diode module that way too, as it would all be enclosed inside the helical focuser but things would get complex as I think the expansion would then need to come after the corrective optics, not before, unless you put a simple plano-convex cylinder lens in front of the aixiz module output like I did to expand the slow axis to twice its width, this worked well for me with this particular diode on mine.

Click to expand...

I think it will indeed fit. From what I can remember the heatsink of my host is about the same as the Zaser host. Did you buy a beam expander on ebay, or did you make it yourself from parts? I'll have to take off the focus cap for sure, but that's not much of an issue to me. I had been thinking about using a concave cylindrical lens first to expand the beam and correct the line, and then a convex cylindrical lens in front of that one to bring it back to a tight beam. What you did may be better to go with instead. As soon as I get some money together I'll give it a try.

The 2 inch focuser I bought on ebay can be fond at this link: New 2 inch 2" Double Helical Focuser 0 02mm Scale for Telescope Guider Precision | eBay

Finding the right FL PCX lens at a good price the bigger challenge.

Alaskan said:

The 2 inch focuser I bought on ebay can be fond at this link: New 2 inch 2" Double Helical Focuser 0 02mm Scale for Telescope Guider Precision | eBay

Finding the right FL PCX lens at a good price the bigger challenge.

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Thanks for the link. I'll look into it later this year, somewhere around my birthday so that I have something to look forward to.

Good idea! +REP for You! :beer:

Hi, G..
i have two of these Ed Crouse doom hosts One with a NDB7A75 and one with a NDB7875 the 7A75/4.0A SXD- and the 7875/2.4A x drive . None of the two tail buttons were altered they hold up well under draw. Hope you like your host great diode for the choice of host can't go wrong. Ridiculous duty cycles. ill post a mag light build i did with a custom made host i had made from Ed Crouse and a custom focus adapter. its awesome.
Well great build buddy awesome job, by the way i heat sinked my drivers to the back of the main sink sucks up tons of heat.

Rich

Lifetime17 said:

Hi, G..
i have two of these Ed Crouse doom hosts One with a NDB7A75 and one with a NDB7875 the 7A75/4.0A SXD- and the 7875/2.4A x drive . None of the two tail buttons were altered they hold up well under draw. Hope you like your host great diode for the choice of host can't go wrong. Ridiculous duty cycles. ill post a mag light build i did with a custom made host i had made from Ed Crouse and a custom focus adapter. its awesome.
Well great build buddy awesome job, by the way i heat sinked my drivers to the back of the main sink sucks up tons of heat.

Rich

Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words, Rich. At first I didn't even think about replacing the switch with a heavier one, but I took it apart at some point and noticed that the switch had written 1.4A MAX on it. That's when I decided to replace it just in case. I figured that it would probably have worked even if I didn't replace it based on several high powered lasers that had been built in these hosts already, but I have 20 or so of these switches laying around anyways. Duty cycles are amazing indeed. I haven't ran it longer than 3 minutes, but even then it's just warm, probably around 30-35ºC.

The back of the heatsink is a great way to glue the driver too as well, but with what I did I'll be able to very easily remove the entire module and driver without any wires having to be cut.

Hi, thats great G glad your enjoying the doom. ill be building 2 Saik SA-305 fat boy builds justorDered the hosts and sinks . This is a great hobby $$$$$$$$
Rich

Not sure you will want to put this kind of focuser on the end of your Mace of Doom after you look at this photo, I put the expander assembly on my Mace of Doom and it just doesn't look the same at all



The size of its heat sink is slightly smaller than the 2 inch helical focuser, inside, so it will slip all the way through unless you put two or three wraps of tape over the heat sink first. I taped the whole thing down and just noticed in the photograph it's drooping a little. That can be fixed easy enough and it works, just all of the Doom style has disappeared!

Here's a photo of the heat sink slid nearly all the way up inside the focuser tube leaving about 3 inches between the G2 lens and the PCX lens on the end of the tube, it looks much nicer but the heat sink is buried inside which is a sin! Now this is a ridiculously huge front end, but holding it, it really doesn't seem so heavy up front, the size of the focuser is huge, but it is very light weight aluminum. If you are wondering, I had to use a different lens when doing this, the focal length of the lens that was on the tube before was good for that distance from the diode, but sliding the heat sink inside shortened the length so much I had to swap the lens with a shorter FL one.



Edit, I put my NUBM44 6W 445nm in this host and the center battery contact spring inside got so hot the solder melted and slid to the side shorting the batteries. As soon as I noticed the laser stopped working I immediately turned it off and opened it up to find the problem. Removed the old spring and put a much heavier one inside, hoping the problem won't happen again, don't need hot batteries blowing up on me.

By the way, I've googled around about that switch, it may only be rated for 1.4 amps, but there are lots of people using it at over 5 amps and no problems, I wouldn't worry about it, it survived my battery being shorted today which was surely far over 10 amps, although only for a couple of seconds.

The first one does look a bit too big and bulky, and like you said, the second one has the heatsink buried inside. I didn't do too much research on the switch and just replaced it. I have many 5A switches so I thought I might aswell use one whether it's needed or not. It's pretty weird that the spring got so hot that it desoldered itself. Could it maybe be a cause of the batteries barely being able to take the load that the diode needs?

I don't think it was the battery, I had the same batteries with this diode in another host and no failure, I just think the spring was too thin, it showed discoloration from heat before the failure.... I believe what happened is when it got too hot it lost its spring force and then collapsed to where it shorted across the ground.

It's probably just the spring being rather weak yeah. These hosts are pretty cheap without the heatsink, which is probably the reason for the spring being so weak as well. I don't think it's meant to handle the currents we push through them either, so that can be another reason. I wonder if any on the machinists on the forum can make similar heatsinks for these kind of hosts, as I'd love to do another build with one of these.