cut open ethernet cable instead. thin,insulated, and holds its form very well. i wanna say its solid copper stranded too

Actually you dont want the wire to be rigid and "hold its form" as it can damage the diode pins if twisted.ie when trying to assemble the host....You need soft flexible wire capable of carrying +3 A.

That Cat5 wire is about the worst wire to use on Laser
or any tight area builds. It is too stiff and springy.
As Grainde pointed out it will stress the pins of your
expensive LD.

The best wire we've seen is the Highly Flexible Silicone
insulated wire like that sold by Flaminpyro..


Jerry

You can contact us at any time on our Website: J.BAUER Electronics

When in rome, do as the romans do!
Its not even a debate whether we should use ANY other wire than the silicon wire 26awg .. U should learn , and read more.

i got some of the TO-18 sockets for my A-140s, and one of the bloody pins on it broke, so ill probably do this, with some kind of glue to make a solid joint for the socket pins that cant bend/break. thanks davo

though i must say, breaking a pin on a 5$ socket is a hell of alot better than breaking a pin on a 50$ diode. and the diodes can be put in/removed from the sockets easy without stressing the pins. perfect for a test setup.

not having to drive out to a shop or wait for shipping, is awesome.

to elaborate, i was attatching the clips from my test powersupply, and the slight movements ended up stressing and then breaking a pin, spent 15 mins trying to solder something to clip onto but ended up having to bin the socket.

Whatever wire you use, its a good idea to wrap some heatshrink around the diode pins, it protects the solder joint and can also serve as a bit of mechanical stress relief.

Learning some and quitting can be just as damaging as learning nothing.

26awg has 40mΩ/ft. That's okay for signals, but pretty wasteful for high current.

"X is best and I will use nothing else for any reason, ever" is not a proper scientific approach. It is the view of a fanboy. We're better than that.

I got a 2ft loop of wire at the back of my speakers, I just cut a few inches off when I need some wire to connect a diode.

People use it all the time (for building lasers) and they are perfect for our application ~3.5A, i guess you should also suggest something better if u have in mind.. 24awg?

3.5A through 26awg? You must be joking. That's half a watt wasted per foot of wire.

Wire is cheap. There is absolutely no reason to run it just under the melting point.

Luckily I don't use a foot of wire in my build
I keep the wire length as short as possible, usually 3-4cm per pin.

Me too! I use Flaminpyros wire and keep the lengths as short as possible, usually around 4 cm max, so the voltage drop at ~2 amps shouldnt be too high

i just ended up soldering the diode directly to the driver outputs, and attatching the wires to the inputs for the driver. wrapped the whole thing in squashed copper pipe with some thermal grease to contact, for heatsinking and structural support. it works great.

the only annoying thing is the focus ring tends to lose grip on the lens so just have it focused all the time now.

LoL Cat5 cable cores for laser!

I dont trust those 5.6mm sockets either for diode to sit in, they are only for killing drivers and diodes if they go open circuit.

^^^^ and they only need to go open circuit intermittently for a
fraction of a second. You'll be scratching your head to find the
cause of your LD or Driver failure...


Jerry

You can contact us at any time on our Website: J.BAUER Electronics