200mW 532nm DIY, modifications, & upgrade!

So wannaburn has inspired me to start sharing some of my successes with DIY green stuff. I normally don't document most of my projects but I figured the forum could use some more green material.

I have accumulated a collection of defunct CNI and generic greenies which I have been toying with lately.

Here is some media illustrating my more recent projects (images are thumbnails - click for full size):



I started off with a CNI pen with a burned out diode. Above is a photo of the new, working B-mount 808nm pump with FAC.

Next, I set up the hybrid crystal (also from a CNI greenie) and got it aligned with the diode for the best power & beam profile I could get.



Aligning the crystal took a good 1.5 hours of fiddling, but experience optimizing many cheap pointers made this relatively easy.



The next step was to align the expander lens and attach the IR filter directly to it to save space. This was not as hard since the crystal was correctly aligned already.

I fired it up and checked the beam profile after the lens.



Looks pretty good!

Now, all I had to do was find a suitable lens, so I dug through my collection of spare glass and found an AR coated lens from another greenie that worked great.



Here is the whole module assembled. With the lens retaining ring threaded in all the way, it is shorter than an Aixiz module.

After that, it was pressed into the host - a constant on/off forward clicky pen - and time to test!







212mW peak is not bad for a DIY alignment job after the IR filter!
Average is ~175mW minimum over a 1.5 minute on cycle.
This pen really puts out a lot of green. The next step will be to improve divergence some. After installing the new optics the divergence will be improved from 1.2mRad to 0.8mRad.
Divergence is measured at 0.82mRad (with new optics) over 42 feet! Beam diameter at aperture is 2mm.



Above is the green pen compared to a DIY 655nm >300mW and a DIY 445nm >130mW (which is for sale, link in signature if interested!).

And finally, for this project, is a video of this high power pen lighting a match!


Here are some photos from previous projects both using CNI crystals as well (but different pumps).

This one is a LEDshoppe 50mW optimized with CNI crystals. Average power was >50mW. Peak was as high as 80mW.



This next one is a work in progress. It's a very small module measuring 12mm in length and 12mm diameter at the base. The goal is just 20mW of green after IR filter.
I have another almost identical module already completed in a pen host doing 20-25mW average. Divergence is only 0.85mRad. It makes a great star-pointer.



Thanks for looking!

Nice work RA :beer:

There isnt much more satisfying than DIY 532..
The results make it all worth while IMHO.

Looks like you got a hold of some good parts. If you
want to get a good divergence, the optics from any
leadlight series pens work very well. For 35$ you can get
a 5mW green from z-bolt and swap out the expander and
AR coated glass collimator. I have had really good results
with these optics, but cant remember the exact mRad.

They also come with an IR filter and APC PD if the driver
supports it.

In the pics it looks like the LD's are mounted with indium?

Double the congrats on the project if you had to mount
them in this way :topic:

Its a very good result!

Mixing and matching components from various green lasers is much more difficult than it would seem, but in this case it worked out very well!

I do have many leadlight greenies in pieces.
Their optics are good, but not quite what I am looking for.

I've already found a lens configuration that works well.
I'm installing it now. Once the epoxy sets it will be ready to fire...

I did not mount it with indium. I just swapped out the B-mounts and centered the new one. Not gonna mess with indium here.

Edit: Got the new lenses installed. It works great and divergence is LOW. I'll get a measurement tomorrow.