Differecnce betwen pulsed and continuous

What exactly is the difference? Is continuous referring to a homemade driver type, and pulsed referring to boards such as flex's? I saw diodes that say max output 240mw, but then i saw it said that was on pulsed. It said that max on continuous is 100mw.

hmm i dont know how to say this but
i think its like this

contionous = _____________________________
pulsed = _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

correct me if im wrong

If that is true then, if i hook [that] diode up to say the 317 or 1117 schematic, i will only get around 100mw then?

You are going to need to do a bit more Research and reading on
Laser Diode Drives in general...

The Flexdrives... Rkcstr Drivers and DDL DIY Current regulated Drivers
all over the Forum are Continuous output drivers...

If you want to build a Pulsed Driver you will need to hunt down a Schematic
on Google or even Google search for a commercial Pulsed driver..


Jerry

Hmm. Interesting, i thought drivers like flex, rkcstr--or any that are inside pointers for that matter--were pulsed, guess i was wrong. I'll try to find a schematic of pulsed then.

A continuous driver will put out a steady, unvarying output current to the laser diode. The DDL driver (LM317 or 1117), the lavadrive, drivers from o-like, are CW or continuous output drivers. Pulsed drivers are less common here on the forum and you will need to do some googling on them. These drivers switch the current on and off, like a square wave output. The duty cycle (on-time vs off-time) must be set to the manufacturer's specs for the particular diode, as well as voltage of the drive pulses and their total current. Some of the earlier DPSS blue handhelds used pulsed drive for the IR pump diode as this seemed to help stabilize the output of the crystals. For the LDs we typically use here at LPF, you will be using a CW driver.

That would be a continuous output 405nm laser with a Flexdrive....

... and this is a pulsed output 473nm laser with the stock CNI driver.



Those photos should illustrate the difference quite well. Those shots are roughly three second exposures while I was whipping the lasers around on a white, non-fluorescent door.

those are pretty sick pictures.

Nicely illustrated quad...

Mmm. Alright, I see. Thanks