Basicly you cant with the 5mw reds at 50ma it will be happy but put 55ma into it and it just dies instantly, you might be able to mod a dealextreme 30mw or something with a pot mod but you risk breaking it/shortining the liftime, so really theres no way to mod a oridarnary one into a burning laser.
Even those will break :'( I built a full circuit it was drawing 200ma i had a 47uf 35 volt tantalum cap and i treated it great and it only lasted 4 days, everything was perfect to i soldered everything pulltested the connections insulatied everthing to prevent contact ahh.. thats my last diode to im just gona have to stick with bought ones..
Im pretty sure its just bad luck for me but they can last a lottt longer, and they have a pretty good current range like between 130ma to 400ma (400 is bad that gives it a short life)
mclovin - uh, remove the "ordinary" part and replace it with a "burning" part.
In other words, you can't. The laser, driver, and usually the power source in an "ordinary" laser can't run at those power levels.
wooooooolazer - What were you using as a heatsink? If the current was regulated and capacitor-protected like that, the heatsink's the next consideration. At 200mA a Senkat diode should last a long time with a decent heatsink. At 400mA it will probably die pretty quickly. I wouldn't chalk it up to bad luck.
mclovin, your best bet would probably be to buy a diode here or somewhere that is meant for burning, and then placing it into a host. It may be tricky if you are new to lasers, but you may be able to pull it off. I am new here too, and still don't know that much about laser even though I have learned alot. You just need to poke around this forum to get info on how to install burning diodes into hosts. also, along with placing it into a host, you need to moniter the current and voltage...