300mw LOC hotlight Tutorial (Pic Heavy)

OK so i finally got time to finish my little hotlight, i wasted 1 hours soldering 4 wires because my soldering iron is so bad that it hardly holds solder on the tip...

Anyway this is kind of a Tutorial aswell my first one too :angel:

The hotlight disassembled


So i pressed my diode into the Aixiz module and then soldered some leads on and placed it in the heatsink



Then i shortened the pill by around 1/2 its original length and cut out the little sections inside the pill to make room for the driver.



I then glued it into place and trimmed the spring to take make the cells fit...



Using a driver from Jib77 I then soldered the short black lead (-) to the LD- the long black lead (+) to the LD+ and the white (case pin) to the V- to establish a negative feed through the host


I then soldered a wire to the switch



I wrapped it in some tape and soldered that to the V+ on the driver


I then wrapped some electrical tape around the driver to stop any shorts


because the protected cells were so long i had to make the switch sit lower then the bottom of the pill, A picture describes a thousand words


then grab some lenses


wrap some teflon tape around them to stop the the lens getting bumped out of focus


charge up your batteries


Put them in your hotlight...

And Lase! with safety glasses ofcourse! Approximate power is around 300mw (estimated using those awesome red acrylic AR coated lenses the diode is running at 429ma



Beamshots!







Hope you liked my little Tutorial! :beer:

BURNING VIDEO + BEAMSHOTS/WARNING LABEL PICS!!




Note: The laser was not switched on this picture


Another beamshot without fog/long exposure taken with a 10.1 megapixel sony camera
Note: how i use the little bump on the tailcap to hold my dustcap when im lasing it makes the laser look cool at night aswell!
Burning through a cd case
YouTube - Red laser burning through a cd case

Lighting matches
YouTube - Red laser lighting matches

Sorry i dont know how to embed videos yet

Enjoy!

Big thanks to Jeff(flaminpyro), Matt (mohrenberg), Jib77, Fiddy and Glenn (scopeguy20)

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

I like the mode you did, great job!!:beer:

Im a little confused though. You said you used a 1.3A jib77 driver. Did you swap/add resistors. To get 429mA? Regardless, great job!

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

These mohlights are great to work with, aren't they? Flexible and lots of space to work with,
after some obligatory fiddling.
I am confused though (there must be an echo in here): you said it's a LOC, so a red diode, right?
Case (pin) is the cathode, another pin the anode, and the third pin is "unused/feedback".
What did you connect that last one to?:thinking:

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Very nice work on this.

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

If you need it LPM'd let me know.

Great build, I have one of these and the "pill" is very sloppy. It moves around inside the host and the battery places a lot of pressure on the "pill". Did you do any fiddling with it to get it to be more stable other then cutting down the battery contact?

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

just throw a drop or two of super glue inbetween the pill and the host bobhaha, it keeps it nice and stable right where you want it to stay

It will be a biotch to get out though.

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

I was contemplating that actually. But that doesn't solve the battery problem. I will try cutting the base spring a bit more and see if that helps otherwise I might have to cut the pill down a bit.

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Yeh that was a typo.. fixed it now its not a 1.3a driver, i was just typing this up late at night, i got jib to change the resistors for me and he even soldered the wires on

Btw bobhaha whats the problem with your hotlight? with mine i made the clicky sit lower then the pill so now the battery just squeezes between the clicky and side of the host, i used a lot of superglue aswell so it doesnt get pushed up, i also sanded the clicky down a bit to get the battery to squeeze through, its fits really snugly now and it doesnt rattle at all, the driver also fits inside the shortened and opened up pill with all the wires

Ive got a a-140 diode on its way so my other hotlight is going to be the same except a different diode, an o-like lens and 1.3a driver

@ anselm, i kind of forgot what i connected what to but i "think" that i connected the case pin to the v- of the driver, cant remember

Thanks for the kind words everyone

EDIT: Bobhaha, i was looking at your rayfoss green build and it seems you've got a thermaltake v9 gaming case you play any pc games?

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Nice build :beer:

1v1 me with my red on top of some tall building one day...lightsaber style :na:

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Nice Build Red are my favorite builds. Although at 429mA it wont be 300mW more like 250-260mW with one of those lenses but hey you might have got a freak like i did in my Key chain one.

:gj:

+:beer:

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Nice build. I'm currently working on my first loc. Last thing I'm waiting on is the DIODE. :na:

Mine though... Will have modes!

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Yeh bhwollen i saw your plans :na:

Lazy laser, we will have to have a lazor fight some day il stand on the centre point tower and you can stand on the harbour bridge

Im not sure if my diodes a freak but it smokes leather and burns holes through leaves like crazy

Thanks for the rep Lazereer :beer:

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

^^ I hope it is.

No Problem.

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Still waiting for my batteries to arrive

We need a Aussie laser meet! :wave:

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Yeah unfortunately it was a bit more of a pain in the ass then I had expected. I got the first working prototype to work today. Not an LPC though.

Re: 300mw LOC hotlight!

Awesome job, very nice!!! +1 :beer:

BTW my soldering iron just crapped out on me after struggling with keeping it hot & solder sticking to it for awhile. Just get another one, so much easier to work with after dealing with what you'd explained