With the price of green-lasers dropping so low on the ebay lasers from China (I got this one for $4.50 with free shipping, impressive 10-day ship time to rural midwest USA too), I thought I'd get one recently to see how they are. The new ones no longer have an easy to adjust potentiometer on the circuit-board. So I was wondering if any of you electronics geniuses could take a gander at the circuit and see if there's a way to patch in a little pot or maybe even just a solder-bridge across an SMC resistor to take it out of the circuit to up-the-ante on these things.
Rather than risk ruining it to remove the works, I used a fine-blade x-acto saw to cut the barrel lengthwise for easy removal (will use friction-tape around it to restore the pressure-fit later).
Here's the overview of what you'll find inside. The little black-plastic saddle slides onto the circuit-board to hold it centered in the housing.
An interesting finding, the threaded part to which the battery section screws into, is actually a pressure-fit threaded ring. Showing this because if you try to slide the works out through the battery-case end, it won't go unless this bit is slid out first.
Here's the top (switch side) of the PCB. (sorry about the blur, hand-held photography camera-shake) Diode to the left, battery-contact spring to the right (in case that's not obvious to everyone).
And the more interesting bottom of the PCB.
So .... does anyone see a simple way to change these from 5-10mw (mine seems brighter than the sold-as 5mw), to the standard-issue pot-modded type that puts out 100mw or more? (if you'd like, feel free to markup and repost any photo showing where the mod needs to be made)
My 2-3 years old pot-modded lasers (still working strong) a purple and green one, are nice. My purple pot-modded one must have much less IR filtering, it can light a match quicker than anything, even if the match hasn't been blackened with a sharpie. The green one's beam still clearly visible in a day-lit room. I found that when showing the green one to someone that you have to make a light-saber sound when waving it around.
Rather than risk ruining it to remove the works, I used a fine-blade x-acto saw to cut the barrel lengthwise for easy removal (will use friction-tape around it to restore the pressure-fit later).
Here's the overview of what you'll find inside. The little black-plastic saddle slides onto the circuit-board to hold it centered in the housing.
An interesting finding, the threaded part to which the battery section screws into, is actually a pressure-fit threaded ring. Showing this because if you try to slide the works out through the battery-case end, it won't go unless this bit is slid out first.
Here's the top (switch side) of the PCB. (sorry about the blur, hand-held photography camera-shake) Diode to the left, battery-contact spring to the right (in case that's not obvious to everyone).
And the more interesting bottom of the PCB.
So .... does anyone see a simple way to change these from 5-10mw (mine seems brighter than the sold-as 5mw), to the standard-issue pot-modded type that puts out 100mw or more? (if you'd like, feel free to markup and repost any photo showing where the mod needs to be made)
My 2-3 years old pot-modded lasers (still working strong) a purple and green one, are nice. My purple pot-modded one must have much less IR filtering, it can light a match quicker than anything, even if the match hasn't been blackened with a sharpie. The green one's beam still clearly visible in a day-lit room. I found that when showing the green one to someone that you have to make a light-saber sound when waving it around.
