So. I needed some green cheapo for star pointing etc.
I knew this laser model is lower quality, and big assembly and power output difference between every piece of this model. So I bought three of them, prepared to choose best one, and sell these two remaining.
Introdution, packaging:
It came in dark paper boxes. Few months ago, I had one 50mW packed in nice comfort "semish" box, and to compare from what I remembrer, the housing of laser itself was also better quality - heavier, better screw thread, everything a little bit better quality, while these three are really cheaper in material machining. It has also the problem about batteries clacking. One of them is ok so far, while two of them are horrible about it. Beam is not disappearing by this issue, but I can see some power fluctuations according to bad contact of batteries and sometimas bad contact from the "power button". It´s really cheap, nothing for serious work.
The beam:
Now I can talk about all of them at once - they are pretty same.
Could not measure really, but the beam diameter at aperture is nice and thin. It is about 1.5mm or less.
Next thing to say is, that it works perfectly in "TEM00" all the time.
On the opposite, there is awful "halo" around the lens.
I took a photo of beam nearly hitting a paper.
Tried to clean all, helped a bit, but still not big deal.
Divergence was totally out of usable range. I mean something like class "F" or worse. Maybe my grandmother could do it better. The beam was visibly expanding, blurry and could not reach buildings more than 1km far.
Brrrr ugly ugly. What crap have I bought?
Now some Diy and repairing notes you can jump over:
So I took it to my work to measure power consumption and so on. It was 610, 590 and 490mA for the "weakest" one. The ability to burn on first look was similar.
I was not happy with the result, and finally tried to disassemble one of them. I was sure that I´m throwing my money right in a bin by disassebly, because when I tried it on my old 50mW one, everything has been glued so much. It resulted as total destruction of LD With acknowledge I am going to do the same, I did it anyway. There came a huge breakpoint. The GOD just enlightened me, and gave me better units to disassemble.
It was damn easy. I found screwable lens inside, so it was only matter of good distance between the LD and the lens, which I could set by screwing the part of body with lens mounted on it.
Here you can see internals:
Still not big deal, but the resistor is a half Watt, almost unable to get burned . I put some paper between it and the housing, because it´s not good to touch each other...
Back to lens - It was totally screwed on, so I tried to unscrew a little bit, which resulted as even worse divergence. Ok, I took some sand paper, and skived the lens body to make it screw deeper on the rest of LD body(heatsink).
It came better! So I did it again and again, looking how it gets better, till it got worse again WTF? I did it too much. So I disassembled these two remaining units, skived and combined lens till I got best results from all of them. There is some minor difference between beams of these units, but It´s much much better, able to shoot far buildings as it´s supposed to be like this typically
Still - it has crappy lens, so no matter how I set it, the beam is expanding anyway and it has not good divergence.
I also tried to potmod this unit, with no better result. For these who wants to potmod - guys, check your current, My home multimeter is broken, so I could not, which resulted as huge overcurrent of the circuit, extreme heating and burning my thumb from the click button! I was lucky that Driver, Diode, and also bateries are still OK.
Here is the picture of laser "dot" without any lens:
Burning abilities:
I bought Alcalines and NiMH GP AAA 1000mAh Accus. They do pretty the same, but Accus can last longer to supply the unit by plenty of current.
These units can pop some baloons from up to 2m, and cut a tape slowly, but cannot light a match. I tried to paint it black, which resulted as "not enaugh". I can smoke them, but I cannot burn them.
Overall:
For these, who don´t want to buy more units to choose from them, and doing some DIY upgrades on it, It is not worth. It´s damn bad quality. I don´t know why shoud I be happy with it, even after tuning action, but hopefully it will work for me some time, till I acquire some money for the REAL BURNER with good quality (CNI or so...)
Anyway I thing all three are still not good enaug, and I´ll propably sell them all. The best one is only good for short range beamshots...
I knew this laser model is lower quality, and big assembly and power output difference between every piece of this model. So I bought three of them, prepared to choose best one, and sell these two remaining.
Introdution, packaging:
It came in dark paper boxes. Few months ago, I had one 50mW packed in nice comfort "semish" box, and to compare from what I remembrer, the housing of laser itself was also better quality - heavier, better screw thread, everything a little bit better quality, while these three are really cheaper in material machining. It has also the problem about batteries clacking. One of them is ok so far, while two of them are horrible about it. Beam is not disappearing by this issue, but I can see some power fluctuations according to bad contact of batteries and sometimas bad contact from the "power button". It´s really cheap, nothing for serious work.
The beam:
Now I can talk about all of them at once - they are pretty same.
Could not measure really, but the beam diameter at aperture is nice and thin. It is about 1.5mm or less.
Next thing to say is, that it works perfectly in "TEM00" all the time.
On the opposite, there is awful "halo" around the lens.
I took a photo of beam nearly hitting a paper.
Tried to clean all, helped a bit, but still not big deal.
Divergence was totally out of usable range. I mean something like class "F" or worse. Maybe my grandmother could do it better. The beam was visibly expanding, blurry and could not reach buildings more than 1km far.
Brrrr ugly ugly. What crap have I bought?
Now some Diy and repairing notes you can jump over:
So I took it to my work to measure power consumption and so on. It was 610, 590 and 490mA for the "weakest" one. The ability to burn on first look was similar.
I was not happy with the result, and finally tried to disassemble one of them. I was sure that I´m throwing my money right in a bin by disassebly, because when I tried it on my old 50mW one, everything has been glued so much. It resulted as total destruction of LD With acknowledge I am going to do the same, I did it anyway. There came a huge breakpoint. The GOD just enlightened me, and gave me better units to disassemble.
It was damn easy. I found screwable lens inside, so it was only matter of good distance between the LD and the lens, which I could set by screwing the part of body with lens mounted on it.
Here you can see internals:
Still not big deal, but the resistor is a half Watt, almost unable to get burned . I put some paper between it and the housing, because it´s not good to touch each other...
Back to lens - It was totally screwed on, so I tried to unscrew a little bit, which resulted as even worse divergence. Ok, I took some sand paper, and skived the lens body to make it screw deeper on the rest of LD body(heatsink).
It came better! So I did it again and again, looking how it gets better, till it got worse again WTF? I did it too much. So I disassembled these two remaining units, skived and combined lens till I got best results from all of them. There is some minor difference between beams of these units, but It´s much much better, able to shoot far buildings as it´s supposed to be like this typically
Still - it has crappy lens, so no matter how I set it, the beam is expanding anyway and it has not good divergence.
I also tried to potmod this unit, with no better result. For these who wants to potmod - guys, check your current, My home multimeter is broken, so I could not, which resulted as huge overcurrent of the circuit, extreme heating and burning my thumb from the click button! I was lucky that Driver, Diode, and also bateries are still OK.
Here is the picture of laser "dot" without any lens:
Burning abilities:
I bought Alcalines and NiMH GP AAA 1000mAh Accus. They do pretty the same, but Accus can last longer to supply the unit by plenty of current.
These units can pop some baloons from up to 2m, and cut a tape slowly, but cannot light a match. I tried to paint it black, which resulted as "not enaugh". I can smoke them, but I cannot burn them.
Overall:
For these, who don´t want to buy more units to choose from them, and doing some DIY upgrades on it, It is not worth. It´s damn bad quality. I don´t know why shoud I be happy with it, even after tuning action, but hopefully it will work for me some time, till I acquire some money for the REAL BURNER with good quality (CNI or so...)
Anyway I thing all three are still not good enaug, and I´ll propably sell them all. The best one is only good for short range beamshots...
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