Sharp GH16 Dual Wave?

I am stumped as to the pinout on these cans. There are 4 pins, and 2 marks for polarity. With the pos on the right, and neg on the left, the middle right is red neg, and the outer right is red pos, but nothing gets any infrared. How many combinations of two pins can there be? I even tried mix-n-match, the two outers, ect, and nothing IR is happening. I had to buy 10 of these, so I have tried more than one with the same outcome, and there doesn't seem to be a data sheet out there for it. Has anyone ever messed with one of these?

Boy, I'll tell you, finding a decent dual wave diode in ONE CAN is really, really, hard to do. Any ideas for a dual wave, single can diode with at least 100mw would also be great. I know they make them, I can get great ones from the factory, if I needed or could afford ten thousand of them. One would suffice.

Contact lazeerer he was selling some 3.8 mm dual red diodes capable of 300 - 400 mW. IIRC they were between $5 - $10. They had three pinouts a common ground and two positives; one for the IR and the other for the 650. I built 3 lasers from them 2 red (380 and 390 mW) and one IR (actually killed the red diode and so made an IR from it!) The IR gave around 250 mW.

WRT the 4 pin diode you mentioned, how are you checking to see if there is an IR output? If you havent tried already, a good way to check would be to use a cheap camera and watch the LCD screen when you turn the laser on. If its working, you will clearly see the dot and poss the beam on the camera screen. Good luck :beer:

I used a gen 1 night vision monocular to check them. This is actually the other half of the project, these are going to be one unit. What I have in mind is to toggle between the two modes, with the IR being only detectable in the scope. I am hoping to have them share a common "dot" point. I found diodes in dvd players that were perfect, if not for the fact that they burned up on me every time. They lived just long enough to tease me......... Oh, well..... The project continues.

If they are what the seller said they are, the two middle pins are both negative and the end pins are
positive, one IR and the other red. There are also single wavelength 4 pin diodes, so maybe the person
you bought them from didn't really know what they were. You shouldn't even need night vision to see
the IR output. Just aim it at something other than your face and give it about 100mA and you should
see a dim red glow. Just be VERY CAREFUL when you're doing this and don't let it turn around and hit
you in the eye.

There are quite a few dual diodes on feeBay if these ones don't work out.

The Lightning Stalker said:

If they are what the seller said they are, the two middle pins are both negative and the end pins are
positive, one IR and the other red. There are also single wavelength 4 pin diodes, so maybe the person
you bought them from didn't really know what they were. You shouldn't even need night vision to see
the IR output. Just aim it at something other than your face and give it about 100mA and you should
see a dim red glow. Just be VERY CAREFUL when you're doing this and don't let it turn around and hit
you in the eye.

There are quite a few dual diodes on feeBay if these ones don't work out.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I kinda figured that the center ones were negatives, I just didn't know for sure. I am really careful about looking at the laser, but there is no lens on it, so I just held it out at a distance, and don't look directly into them. The red wasn't bright enough to concern me about the ir. Checking with the nv was just to be sure.
I might have blown the ir sides on the ones I tested, the voltage from the test driver I made from a 317 was a bit too high, getting it down under 2v will be challenging, I might have to dig up another 317 and build an adjustable voltage supply for it. But I have blown lots and lots of diodes, they usually at least blink a death throe of some kind, and the variable pot I used on the driver was way excessive, by the math, the output came to 2 or 3 decimals past the decimal, I have to crank it up about half way to get the reds to threshold, it should be hard to blow any diode all the way down. It might be a moot point, now, if it turns out to be the case that the voltage is too high, then I can't use these, anyway. But they were cheap, and I still want to know, you know? At least if I learn something, it wasn't a waste of money. You have to look at things that way to get into a hobby like this. I knew when I got into this that many diodes would die on my learning curve. If you can't afford casualties, don't start any wars. Many sacrifices must be made on the altar of the great god "Tinker", if you expect his favor.

Well, I have to think these diodes are just useless, I still get no IR, no matter what. This isn't a huge surprise, I have been searching for the perfect diode for this for a long time, and still haven't found just the right one. The last one I kept was from a dvd burner (at least a hundred old dvd burners have been sacrificed), and it emitted sideways, so I ended up getting mated to a lens with a lot of glue, and still the dots didn't line up. But it lasted for a long time, and was bright enough, that was the best I could do, so far. Appearantly, there isn't a lot of call for a dual wave burning diode in one can, it's cheaper to just use separate diodes and mirrors, and it's only cheaper to integrate into a single can when the power required is minimal, like a read only dvd player.

I'll pm laserer, and see what he's got, next. I know they exist, and I have invested too much time, and too many diodes to give up now. What most people don't understand is that if you don't give up, you can't possibly fail, even if you never succeed. That's why we call those people "loosers".

You might want to try the 3 pin diodes. These say red, but they are actually dual, and it's the last one (probably ever).

12 15mm Mini 650NM100MW Red Laser Module No Driver | eBay

I know that this question is off topic, but I have a question about "
532nm 5mW Chinese lasers for sale (That are not way overspec)": A friend of mine bought a few of these, and some of them were nice and bright, and some, well, just weren't. By "overspec", do you mean that the bright ones were in fact, the "bad" ones? I saved the cavity head from one, and plan to put in a 300-500mw 808nm diode and see what happens. I tried a diode from a cd burner, but that didn't work, I read it has to be 808nm, I think the cd uses 780.

More than likely, yes. 5mW of green is still very bright, though, but if
it's really bright and you can see a beam, then it's ten times that.
30mW and 50mW look about the same, so the only way to tell for
sure is with an LPM. You're right about the CD diodes, they don't work.
It has to be 808nm. Atoms are very finicky about what exactly will
stimulate them.

The Lightning Stalker said:

Atoms are very finicky about what exactly will
stimulate them.

Click to expand...

Hey, that's what she said......... but she might have been talking about something else.....

GVLLD M981 said:

I am hoping to have them share a common "dot" point.

Click to expand...

That won't be possible.
1. There are two different diodes for the different wavelengths. One is usually mounted on top of the other so you have two point sources inside so if you center the red dot on the target, the IR dot will be off.
2. Different wavelengths have different focal lengths on the same lens so you'd have to refocus when you change wavelengths.

djQUAN said:

That won't be possible.
1. There are two different diodes for the different wavelengths. One is usually mounted on top of the other so you have two point sources inside so if you center the red dot on the target, the IR dot will be off.
2. Different wavelengths have different focal lengths on the same lens so you'd have to refocus when you change wavelengths.

Click to expand...

So I have an interesting idea, I have a dvd burner that could donate it's laser sled, is there not a beam converging crystal of some kind in there? As it happens, the host is ample enough to take the whole sled, so what I would need to figure out is where/how to place a collumation lens, any thoughts on that? It's handy that the diodes and the combining optics are already arranged in the sled the right way.

You could place a longer focal length aspheric after the combiner as long as both diodes are at their
respective positions for proper collimation. If not, they would have to be collimated first and then
combined.