What the the best diodes for DIY lasers?

I am curious what are the best diodes one can obtain for DIY purposes?
Who are the best manufacturers of diodes?
I want to tinker with building lasers myself so I need some help here. From the most expensive to cost effective to the cheapest, any information is appreciated.

Uhh nobody's just going to hand you this information when it's very easily located by doing some basic searching on this forum. The search button is your friend.

Three words ---> READ BEFORE POSTING!!!!!!!!

--hydro15

here you go thanks spydee ;D although you will still have to read lol
heres a great place to start
;D

http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1218324818

I know what you guys mean.I can get these diodes form these ppl...But what I am asking is...what is the BEST diode you can find on the market and who are the best manufacturers?

I just want to know who makes the best diodes... interesting thing to know don't you think?

Thanks in advance.

What do you define as BEST? Most powerful, easiest to work with? The SLD1332V diode is 500mW of red in a 9mm package, which would make it the best power-wise but you need to buy hundreds at over $350 each....

Ya know I think all "BEST" Questions are all subjective aren't they? What's the best car stereo? Alpine? does everyone agree with you? Probably not. How come? there's so many features and things to look at in which is the "BEST" of anything? Not to mention your opinion of certain things are going to be different than mine. Do you value Crisp clean well balanced sound or do you like LOUD BOOMING BASS? Only YOU, can make an assessment of what is best. We just provide the specs and such (which are available if you search)

The L die, open can diode used in the LG 22x DVD-RW is a good one.

I want to be an expert in laser building..hehehe. I do have an Electrical Engineering degree but I ended up being a computer programmer(spent much more time with computers in school). Man all those times in school when I was sitting in labs playing around with analogy circuits, I should have paid more attention.

Now what are the main factors affecting a laser's burning capability and beam quality? Is it the diode, or crystal or the optics?

lasernvb said:

Now what are the main factors affecting a laser's burning capability and beam quality? Is it the diode, or crystal or the optics?

Click to expand...

Yes. All those things affect it. Diodes give a fairly funky beam (read: not circular), so to get a good beam or the ability to burn things, you need some lens action. A fairly simple focus lens will do you good for burning, just focus it to a pinpoint, so the Aixiz and Meredith modules that DIYers use will be fine. If you want really high beam quality, you need some more lenses, but at least for me and many others, focusing the Aixiz/Meredith way out towards infinity does fine for my needs (my needs being "ooooo, pretty color" in the dark).

As far as manufacturers, well, who knows? The person selling it may know where it came from. A lot of companies make diodes, and the company who made the sled/player may not have made the diode. Sony, Sharp, Nichia, lots of big names make them, as well as a lot of little names. For a particular part you may be able to look up it's history, but people generally don't say "well Sony is great, but I've had some real dogs from Sharp". Quality control on these things is generally really high, so really the worst they'll ever be is good.

The best diodes? Well, depends what you want. Let's start with color: Ir (808nm is popular), 650nm red is very popular, you can get 635nm orange/red, and 405nm violet. All of these are pretty in expensive. If you really want to, you can get up to about 473nm blue diodes for DIY, but these will cost you (thousands of USD). Then, there's power. Do you want to burn? Do you want to see the beam? Do you jsut want a cooler color than all your friends for presentations? There's something out there for almost everybody in diodes. (Just no green laser diodes. Yet.)

And DPSS, which is moving away from DIY (although people still do this sometimes as DIY), opens up whole other worlds of possibility.

Laser diodes are like ice cream, what flavor do YOU like most?