i was messin around with my red OC set at 300MW and it accidently shined off a mirror and right back into itself... then it instantly went dim... im assuming its toast?
it was focused so that the dot was about 4-5mm up close and 50 feet away... i think they call that focused to infinity? correct me if im wrong. but yeah, it was just focused regular like for normal usage.
That would mean the beam on exit from the lens is essentially parallel. If you now reflect it back upon itself, it will get focused exactly onto the emission region of the diode...
it wan an acrylic lens with a small scuff on it. "makes a large dark patch when you unfocus the laser and shine the "huge dot" on the wall, you can see if your lens has imperfections that way.
anyways just an acrylic lens... and please note ALL of the damage took place in a split second... mirrors = BAD. NEVER shine directly at a mirror, now myself i love shining lasers beams off of multiple mirrors just for the fun of it, just be carefull lol
well seeing as it was an open can diode meatball i can immagine it would fry that tiny little filiment wire on either side of the "chip" itself. the little wires connect to two of the pins that are visible from the front of the diode, like dr-ebert said if it was paralel upon exit... then during re-entry it would focus the ENTIRE beam directly onto the origin of light...being the little chip and two small little wires...maybe its a whole wire i dont know... but if youve ever looked backwards through the lens of an ALMOST burnt out diode at about 1-2mW it will magnify the chip and you can then observe it for a breif moment. its quite fascinating. and sure enough... i looked at my diode through the lens turned down to minimum, and sure enough... the little tiny wire on the left of the chip had burnt out just BARELY... if i had some kind of micro soldering skills...maybe i could ressurect it. but i doubt it would be worth the trouble...or that the chip itself would still work at all.