Help me to revive cheap 5mW laser

Hello,

I'm new to green lasers. I bought three 5mW lasers from eBay (about $5 each) and only one of them had the normal brightness of a 5mW laser. The other two had very inconsistent, but most of all, very weak output, like they had (almost) dead batteries. I took apart one of them, and thought if I pot modded it a bit would make it bright again. But these lasers have no pots.
What can I do?
Does resistor modding work on this model? With an adjustable resistor?
Here it is, the silver cap is plastic and the brass module was like welded to the aluminum tube:







Is it possible to mod it to 10-15mW?
Thank you.

Usually when you get these they are already over 5mw. You would be better off just buying another one.
It is not wise to mod these anyway it usually kills them.

That driver uses fixed resistors, there is no pot to mod. That being said Pot modding is never a good idea any more. There was a time years ago when green lasers were new on the market and most manufacturers were just churning them out without binning them. Then you could often pot mod a laser safety and get a few mW more out when you happened upon a unit with better efficiency than normal. Those days are long gone. Manufacturers bin their units now - their 1mW, 5mW, 15mW, etc models are all exactly the same inside, they just make one model and sort them by how much power they can squeeze out of it. That is why you can't safely pot mod any more, cheap green pointers are already turned up to the maximum they can take before they leave the retailer. This is part of why they are so much more inexpensive now than they were years ago. Manufacturers get tons of low output ones via the binning process.

So, no. You're stuck with it how it is.

Btw, the reason the module was stuck to the aluminum housing is that when aluminum is pressed up against copper alloys it can cause galvanic corrosion between the two metals which over time makes them stick together.

To be 'stuck with it' it's not an option!
The main problem is almost no output by default with fresh batteries. The modding to 10-15 mW is optional. I don't know what's wrong, the laser diode or the electronic driver? So, can I use an adjustable resistor in parallel with one of driver's resistors to make diode shine again? If so, which resistor should be modded? If that will kill (an already dead) the laser, no problem, it's already sacrificed on my altar of knowledge. :wave:
Any tips welcomed.
Thank you.

I don't see the point. A 20mW green pointer is only about $15.

Where is my HAMMER ! SMASH !

If you post a vid to Youtube of you smashing all 3 with a large ball-peen hammer I might be persuaded to send you $5.00 for a new one :crackup: (plus shipping of course).

Oh....look

NOT worth it, buy another one, get good batteries, leave it alone. Most ebay/amazon 5 mW greens are between 10-40 mW anyway...

Yes you can resistor mod this particular driver.
On the side of the driver board that has the momentary switch , at the top right corner of the switch you will see a resistor labeled "1R0". This is a 1.0 ohm surface mount resistor. This is limiting the max output at around 70-80ma..
If you want higher output at around 180-200ma then replace this resistor with an "R68" surface mount resistor. This is a .68 ohm resistor which will raise the output to 180-200ma. However doing this will cause all other components to run hotter and without any real way to release the heat this will certainly decrease the lifespan of your laser pointer. This allow you to burn paper, matches e.g. etc.. Ive been using my laser which has the identical driver with this mod for over 6 months. I use/play with it everyday. I figure ill get maybe 900-1000 hrs of use instead of the 5000hrs it was rated at originaly. For the performance enhancement you get, it seems like a fair trade to me. Have a good day and good luck...BTW all the other poeple that told you not to mod this driver are 100% correct...its really not worth it for the price of lasers now days.