Are POTs completely necessary?

Hi everyone, I know this may sound like a silly question but hear me out. Im using daedals driver and I know if you use a certain ammount of resistance you should be able to run your laser without a POT. what I would like to know is what do you think that "sweet spot" is for the red senkat diodes and the blue daedal diodes. Sweet spot reffers to the number of ohms where the laser is safely running at its best (perferred mA's).

A guess for me is doing about 5 ohms for the red senkat diodes. I have no idea for blue ray's from daedal.

P.S. I am currently in the process of making the ultimate flashlight mod where you do not need to "destroy" the flashlight in order to have a laser. Instead you can swap out the current cree unit with a duplicate laser unit and after you are done with the laser, it is an easy swap back to a flashligt or even a blue ray laser. Pictures and info will come later but it is a real bad a$$ idea that even looks sweet. Beat that! ;D

so far I've had two Blurays that reached lasing threshold right at 33ohms, which measured 37mA with DDLs driver, BUT I had one that didn't reach lasing threshold until 44mA! so, I would consider 33ohms a safe start, then to add high ohm resistors to lower the ohm a bit.

but the best thing to do is use a 25ohm+ pot AND a ~25ohm resistor, and once you barely reach lasing threshold, to measure the ohms across the pot and resistor, now you have THAT diode's sweet spot.

hope that helps.

Yeah, I guess that it should be tested with a POT first. I just want people to give be their "sweet spots" if they can. Thanks member02.

It's just that not al diodes are the same, so the best thing you can do is find the "sweet spot" with the pot, measure the pot's resistance at that particular moment and then replace it with an apropriate resistor.You would probably find a different sweet spot for eatch diode....

Gazoo has mentioned many times the sweet spot for senkat's diodes is 160 mah, at that current setting the diode will live long and it will also bee a very good burner. If you want more power, then you can just put in more and more current and see how the diode will react, because like switch said, not all diodes are the same. So you can't exactly have a sweet spot for all senkat's diodes

Yup, and I still stand by the 160ma's for the SenKat diode. But I think it is fairly safe to run them at 250ma's with proper heatsinking...of course they probably won't last as long, but the output will almost double with the extra 100ma's or so making them more fun for burning. I know others go higher than 250ma's, but I have not done so with the SenKat diode...yet...lol

The blu-rays are a bit trickier...and I think there have been a couple of reports of the lasing threshold beginning above 40ma's. But the majority of us have found running them at a little less than 40ma's is safe...so member02's suggestions are very good.

Now I will add for experimenting and especially if you are making a labby, of course you will want to use a pot. But I still recommend a resistor in series with the pot so the current is limited with the pot turned to its least resistance. This will help to prevent running too much current into the diode if you tend to get carried away like I do... ;D

yea, the only thing keeping me from turning my bluray up further is that it's a pain in the ass to take it apart and solder on another resistor, LOL!

About how many mA would 5 ohms give using the daedal circuit. I thought it was around 250 but I know I am wrong. Maybe 100 or less?

aaronX987 said:

About how many mA would 5 ohms give using the daedal circuit. I thought it was around 250 but I know I am wrong. Maybe 100 or less?

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Check my post here. I think you'll find the info you need. If not, just PM me.