Did I just drastically shorten my diode's life?

Uh oh, I must have gotten some debris on my 445nm diode's window because a dot was melted into the center. :cryyy:

The beam profile got totally messed up from the melted center and I decided to break the window by stabbing it with a mechanical pencil tip.

To my surprise, that seemed to fix the problem and I am now getting a clean beam profile and full power according to my LPM.

But did I just drastically shorten the diode's life since it no longer has a sealed window?

Probably. But not by that much... you may still get a couple months out of it yet!

The problem is that the broken glass inside may cause harmful reflections in the can. Maybe not. If the diode just up and dies, then you'll know what caused it.

You should of decanned the diode if you couldn't clean the glass.

Yep what T_J said, and yes you have shortened the life of the diode by letting the air in, I had one die in a little more than 2 months after de-canning, and it was a clean de-canning.