Replacing laser diode... Help??

Okay, I just dredged up a perfectly working, and decent laser pointer I've had for a while...

It's been a personal favorite of mine (way before the days of 200mW hand-held's and other burning lasers). There's no where on the pointer it says what mW it is, but it's probably only 1 or 2mW maximum.

The good thing is it also has two super bright LEDs on it, a bright white one, and an ultra-violet LED. The pointer therefore has two buttons; the top one for the pointer, and the bottom one that allows to switch between the white and violet LEDs.


Now, the whole crux of my problem. Well, I wouldn't call it a problem but more like a ... situation that I would like some help with.

At the moment I'm powering it by an AC/DC power adapter, straight to the power point (240v). There must be something within the circuit keeping it from ... blowing out, because its working nice and fine. And that's good.

Okay - my first customization; I want to remove the shitty 1mW diode that is currently on there (see pics), and replace it with, say, a 16x DVD Burner diode (from StoneTech). I can do the soldering, etc, no problem, as it's what I'm good at.

But, will the circuit be fine hosting the 200mW diode? Or will I have to completely scratch that and just buy a driver kit from StoneTech and a diode and use it with that? I just wonder this so if it's worth me just saving money buy using the circuit I currently have...

Here's a driver I'm thinking of buying if I need one, is it good enough, and will it accept the 16x DVD diode?
http://stonetek.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=71&products_id=225

Also, here's the diode in question: http://stonetek.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=180

By the way, the circuit I have doesn't have a heat-sink or anything... So... It might be worth it getting a decent driver kit, but I'd like your expertise on this... To save me time and money. Where would I get a decent heat-sink and how much roughly would it cost?

I've uploaded the pictures of it to Photobucket and are linked in this thread. I've also taken a quick (bad quality) video from my webcam to show what it can do, and it up close, etc. It's a little blurry, etc, but it should be enough to see it, etc. Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-bS1Mdf86s

If you could recommend any specific hardware I'd need to buy, to achieve maximum results, please post also. I welcome all the help I could possibly receive from people who know what they're talking about.

Thanks and if you have anything else to add that might help that'd be great.

Cheers,
Kev.




Pictures:

If you want to put a 16x diode in there, you will in fact need a new driver... as such you're going to need to figure out some other way of driving the LED's.. just a resistor and pushbutton should work fine.

The driver that's in there will be giving out just a few mA of current, whereas the 16x diodes want some 250-300mA. If you just dropped the 16x in place it'll only put out some 5mW if it even lases.

You can get that same driver for cheaper on the buy/sell/trade board by the way... or for that price you can get drlava's flexdrive which might work better for your purposes since it only needs 3-5v rather than rckstr's driver which needs 6-12v.

so what exactly do you want to keep from this pointer? the body?
what type of batteries does it take? if it takes button cells, they won't last very long driving a burner. if they work at all...
that circuit will be useless running a burner, but it looks pretty good quality for a <5mw red.
probably a good idea to find another host and keep that laser, unless you really like the case, i don't think you will be able to keep the led's and fit a burner in there at the same time

I am not stopping you though

Is it just me or is that a 3.5mm diode with module? :-?

If so, I'm not sure you could even get the 16x to fit.

Yeah upon doing a lot of research, I've decided to scratch that circuit, etc completely, and go with making a DDL Driver.

Thanks for all the help and input and whatnot though.