New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon pop

Finished another brick laser pointer. This is using the high powered xbox diode, which I'm driving at 82.5mA. This puts the output well over 50 mW.

The pointer uses 6 AA batteries and a DDL circuit as a regulator. The diode is housed in a Meredith housing with a glass lens.

In the image below you can see my two xbox hd bluray pointers. The one on top is using the 'low' powered xbox diode, at 35mA.. the one on the bottom, just completed, is 50+ mW

Read more about the pointer here:
http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1209940381/348#348



Closeup of the two pointers:



Couple little videos of the pointer popping some balloons at 6+ feet:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQJaTckSYs[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2W_DHgZi30[/media]

Re: New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon

very nice! blu-ray kicks ass

dont you wanna drive it a little bit higher? it's the xbox high powered one :/

Re: New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon

82.5mA Isnt really underpowering the diode its just being safe.
Nice beam shots

Re: New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon

pwnstar said:

82.5mA Isnt really underpowering the diode its just being safe.
Nice beam shots

Click to expand...

didnt say that.

i know he's playing safe, i was just asking to know

(these guys reached 110mA didnt they?)

Re: New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon

Yea I think so. No one really knows how long it will last at 110-125mA tho.
I think im going to run mine at 90mA

Re: New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon

Oh, it's definitely tempting to increase the power to the diode. Easy to do, just twist the pot. However, after going through all the work of building the thing I want it to last. Apparently Climbak has been testing one of these diodes @ 90mA and it's lasted for days. So I'll keep mine a little below that. I left it on for a couple of hours last night.. the diode seems fine. The housing gets a little warm, that's it.

For my next pointer I may push things a bit harder. 50+ mW of violet is beautiful. I'm now lusting for 100+ mW of 405nm, but that will have to wait.

Re: New homemade 'brick' BluRay - 50+ mW - balloon

Nice job flogged.
One tiny suggestion though, how about trying a different host? A beautiful laser like this shouldn't be in that brick. ;D