Back from a break

Hey all, I'm coming back from a break of not doing any DIY or building.

It's only been a couple of months, and although I learned a lot, I never knew enough to really say I knew A LOT about lasers. I've just had too much school and personal life issues lately. But I have 2 orders for lasers that I could really use the cash for, so I'd like to fill them lol.

1-low powered blu-ray for my dad's friend at work (loves the one I made for my dad so much that he wants one!!)
2-high powered laser for my sister's boyfriend as a Christmas present.

I have 2 803t drives and one long open can (red) drive.

I think I'm going to make violet lasers for each of them, as one wants a violet, and the other should just get violet cause they are sweet, but

For the low powered 803t, can I just hook up the circuit, discharge capacitor and all that good stuff before hooking the diode etc. and slowly turn up the pot till it starts to lase? If I do that, should the initial lasing output be safe?

I should be able to find a good circuit to use for both of these, but if there have been any new "discoveries" of easy-ish DIY circuits, then a link would be nice but i can always just search for them, too.

thanks for any help

PS

For circuits right now we have rkcstr drivers and flexdrives (lavadrives)

The rkcstr drivers come in adjustable and fixed, for ease of use I just buy the fixed so I don't have to mess with setting the current. For a blu-ray you will have to power it with a least 7.5v, more if you push it. Most people run their 803Ts at over 150mA now.

The flexdrive only needs 2.5v to run so you can use 2 AAs for your build. You can either set the current yourself or you can pay $4 for Dr. Lava to set the current before he send it to you.

Also, in the GB section you can get 6x sleds for $55, you can get 200mW out running it at 200mA.

6x for $55????

I remember them being a lot more the last time I checked!

Anyways, I will be using a 9v battery since they will be fine with the project box build. and that is another question... hosts. The low powered will be fine with a box build, but for the high powered blu-ray, would it be possible to put the flex drive inside a MXDL host? With the heatsink and all, i'm not entirely sure there will be room.

There's room for a flexdrive in an MXDL, Jayrob does it all the time. There are some pictures in some of his FS threads on how he does it.

And the 6x burners do cost a lot more, around $200, but some people found suppliers of the sled. Everything has gone down in price recently, I just bought a 20x burner sled for $13 from ndrew, we used to have to rip those out of $25 drives. The PHR-803Ts are around $15 too, for a while some guy was charging $32 a sled and people bought them up.