UK Modified 1mw LASER, Great Fluke!

Hi All!

I am in the UK and browsed this forum many times with great interest in a newly developing hobby with LASER's. I believe I have made a discovery today that may help out some UK enthusiasts in creating a more powerful LASER pointer. Unfortunately in the UK we can only buy 1mw LASER pointers from the shops and they are quite expensive (£20 / $32) compared to almost anywhere else in the world.
Today I bought a 1mw green pointer from Maplin Electronics with the view of just using the optics, a DVD burner LASER and making my own driver as per instructions found on this great site!
When I powered this thing up I had a barely visible beam in pitch blackness but a nice green dot, whoopee!
I took the pointer apart and noticed a black type lens glued over the LASER which also took a power source to it. I have never seen this in any of the ones I have viewed on the internet so decided to de-solder the power cables to it from the driver board and see what happened.
OK I admit this was a complete stab in the dark but I wasn't worried about damaging the LASER so I thought what the hell! The result however nearly blinded me! Removing the power to that thing results in a highly visible beam that goes as far as the eye can see!
I tried at first turning the pot as in the pot-mod tutorials but that did nothing, although I have not moved it since pulling the juice to that odd black lens so I will give that a go later.
Can anyone throw some light on this please and any other possible tweaks that may improve it further if possible? Should I remove the whole black lens thing?
Sorry if this is already common knowledge and I have missed it but as I say I am a complete newbie to this and this is my first post.
Thanks to you all for creating such an interesting and newbie friendly forum!

Sparky, that looks like a power calibration/optical feedback device. It monitors the output to make sure it stays under 1mW. You removed that which made the output become unregulated. I doubt removing the unit would cause any further improvement, and you may end up misaligning a crystal.

For a visible beam like that you're probably looking at 50mW+ (though no way to tell from a photo).. I'd be happy with what you got, on that; pretty surprising, honestly.

sparky0101
it seems your laser is over 1mw. you can not see a clear visible beam from only 1MW green laser.
you may try to buy some laser modules on ebay and make a laser by your own. the customs doesn't forbid the inport of laser modules.
good luck~~~
Merry

You should do a quick tutorial. I'm sure it would help a lot of people.

Uhhh... no laws relating to laser purchase in UK. Not allowed to use them in presentations if they're >1mW, but shops are allowed to sell them. They're just reccomended not to. CyberDog in Camen Town sells more powerful ones, if you're interested. Alternatively, you could just get 'em online like the rest of us.

Do make a tutorial. I'm sure we'd all like to see what you did, but i wouldn't reccomend getting any lasers from Maplin. They're overpriced for something disproportionately underpowered because so many people haven't seen greens before so they can get away with it. Order online. PM me if you want to organise me ordering the laser and then getting it to you, if you don't feel safe with getting it yourself.

As aryntha says, the optical feedback is disabled by cutting the wires shown in the pictures.
This means that there is no more automatic power control (APC) monitoring the current to the diode.
The reason turning the pot does nothing is either because the APC automatically adjusts the current to keep the power at its pre-determined value.

A tutorial? I hope you guys don't need a tutorial for cutting 2 wires.

Dislodging the optics is a bad idea. Realigning those lenses can be a pain in the ass and won't get you any more power. You are probably getting between 20 and 40mW, which is good for these types of pointers. You will not get much more from the crystals in that assembly even with more pump power. Leave it alone and enjoy it.

Also, 1mW and 5mW pointers from shops like those and Z-bolt, etc. are more expensive than their cheap Chinese counterparts because they actually output 1mW or 5mW, in keeping with federal regulations.
This is accomplished by implementing the APC which maintains the power at a value set at the factory.
With that said, these days $40 is a bit much but who's to say they aren't allowed to make some profit?

RA_pierce said:

A tutorial? I hope you guys don't need a tutorial for cutting 2 wires.

Click to expand...

Making a proper thread, in the proper place will help n00bs who dont know, or afraid to try it.

:thinking: Isnt that what we do here?

Hi.

I'm interested in this. Can you confirm that you have this item number: A64JK
I won't post the Maplin webpage as I'm viewing their mobile site. Just put that product code in the search on their website.

Thanks for your help!
Ian

Hi.

I just got one of these of these Maplin lasers off ebay for 10gbp. I cut the wires and it's a lot brighter. Last week I got the same type of thing also on eBay for 5gbp imported. That was rated at 1mw but comparing it with the unmodified Maplin one it's more powerful.

Now I cut those wires it's a lot brighter, but there seemps to be quite a bit of light scattered around the main beam.

Ian

any one get a meter reading on these? Very cool

How did you get the lens cap of? I want to be able to clean the lens without just moving dust around.

The gold part at the end was a very tight fit. Not screwed on. I put it in a vice.

Thank you, i now worried of damging the product. If you disconnect the two wires, does it drain the batteries more? :thanks

I don't have any issues with the batteries once the wires are cut. Go for it! It's very bright.

The batteries will be drained faster. To be honest, this is very cool, but if you have a paypal account you're better off ordering a green laser from pretty much anywhere and not modifying it and you'll get basically the same result.