Please Help. Newbie Pulling Out Hair. lol

Hi guys. i love the site and am loveing this new hobby.

heres my problem. I built the driver from stone tek. i got a couple of the little kits wich was great. im not new to soldering and electronics as i am a electronics tech but i am green when it comes to lasers. whats happening is with the burning red lasers and i have dozens of them when i hool them up they are really dim. eg no power. i can figure out what to do. plus it gets really hot not sure if they are supposed to get that hot. ummm. im not sure what else i can tell you. i know the circuit is right because i tested a regular laser pointer diiode and it works fine. just the burning diodes dont power up. if someone can help me il shoot some diodes over to them for free lol.

the other thing i dont really know what questions to ask so maybee you can help me there too.

thanks guys and gals
shawn

Where did you get your diodes from? And how much current are you putting into them? They're not supposed to get really hot, heat kills LDs.

Are you using proper heatsinking? Maybe that's why they get hot.Also be aware that some low power pointer diodes use 4-4.5V while dvd diodes are more comfortable at about 3V

i know the circuit is right because i tested a regular laser pointer diiode

Click to expand...

using a "regular laser pointer diode" (?) doesn't cut it I am afraid, did you test the circuits to see if they were doing what they were meant to do?
http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1197651171

Once you know the circuit works correctly then you sort out other reasons for hot, non-lasing LD's.

Regards rog8811

circuit tested fine. im not laseing i guess. very strange.

I wonder if you really put a 808nm in there by mistake if it was extracted from a drive or something of the sort.

goldfingerfif said:

I wonder if you really put a 808nm in there by mistake if it was extracted from a drive or something of the sort.

Click to expand...

Good question, where did you get the diodes from? Did you extract them from DVD burners, or did you get them from stonetek. If you got them from stonetek, then they're surely not IR.