I decided to go with this one for a number of reasons.
My first laser was red and so was my first burning one ( the dilda 660nm from o-like around 200mw.)
638nm is ridiculously bright for a red. When it lights up my room it gives some of my green lasers a run for the money( in terms of room brightness) and it has a way better beam visiblity than 650 although it's still no where as good as green is per mw. I seriously could see my way around the room even thought the laser was aimed at a brown cabinet and not the ceiling.
From testing on my PSU the total power use is just a bit over 1.5 watts so this heat sink is adequate as it starts to feel mildly warm after 2-3 minutes from psu tests that I've done.
Well today I tested it with 4 AAAs in a holder with a on and off switch just to see how does being hooked up to nimh batteries as the drivers voltage range is in the 3-5.5 volt. I ran it for 2-3 mins while taking these pictures and the room temp was 75 and the heat sink handled the laser just fine. I let it cool for a minute and then ran it for another 2 minutes or so. This is just fine as I intend to use it simply as a pointer and not a burner since things have changed when a 200mw red was the only good burner. So it likely won't be on for more than a minute.
My only conundrum now is I need to get some soder and start practicing as I have an iron but I cant solder for the heck of me so this is why I started with a prebuilt module. I have batteries of all types such as some flat lithium 3.7 volts that may make a good candidate. I just need to get a switch to cut the circuit. Or I have 3 400mAh lifepo4s AAs that i could put together for one 1.2ah 3.2v battery which should last quite awhile. I kinda like the way this laser looks with the heat sink so I'm thinking I won't put it into a host , but i'm not sure on that 100%. It's gonna be awhile till I can take time to work on this as I have classes that finish in early may and this is one of my summer projects and it feels exciting already.
My first laser was red and so was my first burning one ( the dilda 660nm from o-like around 200mw.)
638nm is ridiculously bright for a red. When it lights up my room it gives some of my green lasers a run for the money( in terms of room brightness) and it has a way better beam visiblity than 650 although it's still no where as good as green is per mw. I seriously could see my way around the room even thought the laser was aimed at a brown cabinet and not the ceiling.
From testing on my PSU the total power use is just a bit over 1.5 watts so this heat sink is adequate as it starts to feel mildly warm after 2-3 minutes from psu tests that I've done.
Well today I tested it with 4 AAAs in a holder with a on and off switch just to see how does being hooked up to nimh batteries as the drivers voltage range is in the 3-5.5 volt. I ran it for 2-3 mins while taking these pictures and the room temp was 75 and the heat sink handled the laser just fine. I let it cool for a minute and then ran it for another 2 minutes or so. This is just fine as I intend to use it simply as a pointer and not a burner since things have changed when a 200mw red was the only good burner. So it likely won't be on for more than a minute.
My only conundrum now is I need to get some soder and start practicing as I have an iron but I cant solder for the heck of me so this is why I started with a prebuilt module. I have batteries of all types such as some flat lithium 3.7 volts that may make a good candidate. I just need to get a switch to cut the circuit. Or I have 3 400mAh lifepo4s AAs that i could put together for one 1.2ah 3.2v battery which should last quite awhile. I kinda like the way this laser looks with the heat sink so I'm thinking I won't put it into a host , but i'm not sure on that 100%. It's gonna be awhile till I can take time to work on this as I have classes that finish in early may and this is one of my summer projects and it feels exciting already.
