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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

DIY green with spare parts

Joined
Sep 16, 2007
Messages
3,658
Points
113
I just returned from vacation to Hawaii with my unofficial "girlfriend." I just want to say that Hawaii is awesome.

Anyway... I have lots of spare diodes, heatsinks, crystals, drivers, etc. from lasers and disc reader/burners that were sacrificed for the good stuff. I hate wasting parts so I decided I would try to make use of some of my "scraps."

I slapped a 0.3W 808nm diode in front of a crystal set from an X50 and put it in a heatsink with a bit of thermal glue.

The crystal set was pumping out 61mW peak in the stock CNI assembly.
In the setup I threw together I am getting 94mW unfiltered and 82mW filtered peak power.
The power drops rapidly after a 30 seconds as the module warms up, but the average power is about 50mW 532nm for a couple minutes. It runs in TEM00 with no hops.
I didn't bother measuring pump power or current draw because this was really just an experiment to do something new. I used the diode and driver from 2 different 5mW greens and a heatsink from another. I used a larger brass heatsink over that module for extra cooling and to make a nice fit into the new version dilda host. There is a lot of room for perfecting this module... but as a laser built with scraps, it's fine as it is.
Here are pictures.

I used some heatsink from a 6X sled to keep the driver cool.
DSC09315.jpg


DSC09316.jpg


DSC09317.jpg


In comparison to a 120mW X105:
DSC09320.jpg


DSC09323.jpg
 





Joined
Sep 16, 2007
Messages
3,658
Points
113
Ha! Nice one man, have you tried using a 500mW 808nm diode?

The 0.5W diode is what Nova uses. I didn't have an LPM before I took the crystals out of the X50 so I was not able to see if increased pump power from the stock setup could achieve higher powers with reasonable stability.
Next time I get one of these I will do some tests. The crystals can handle the power, but will not maintain peak output without better cooling.
 
Joined
Apr 28, 2009
Messages
2,416
Points
63
Kudos Pierce! If you ever figure out how to get double the output you might just be able to go to Hawaii every 6 months. ;-)
 




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