Ebay $9 blu-ray pens: GREAT!

Blade said:

this is probably a little off topic, but what actually causes the mode hopping. and what is TEM00 and TEM01???

Click to expand...

This might help: Transverse mode

I believe my 2 greens and 1 violet are coming today. Should be fun to play with for at least a little while. makes this arctic wait a bit more tolerable :yh:

tvor said:

I believe my 2 greens and 1 violet are coming today. Should be fun to play with for at least a little while. makes this arctic wait a bit more tolerable :yh:

Click to expand...

that's what i've been doing since giving my money to wl. Buying existing lasers that arrives in less than a month.

I wasn't impressed with the greens. The two I got are HIGHLY temperature dependent. One doesn't like being hot, and the other doesn't like being cold.

qumefox said:

I wasn't impressed with the greens. The two I got are HIGHLY temperature dependent. One doesn't like being hot, and the other doesn't like being cold.

Click to expand...

was goldilocks playing with the greenies instead of eating her porridge?

Heh. I donno

I did tear one of the 405's apart tonight. What I found wasn't really worthy of starting it's own thread so I'll just say here.

The drivers max out at 85mA. This one was set at 72mA from the factory and doing 42mw.

Unfortunately I couldn't torture test the diode. I broke the + off getting it out of the host.. whoops. Actually I tore the switch, a SMD cap, and some traces off the driver too heh. But since fixing stuff like this is what I do for a living, repairing the driver wasn't that big a deal.

After replacing the dead diode with a PHR though. at 85mA, it was putting out 51mW. That's roughly in line with the original diode at doing 42mw at 72mA so apparently the diodes in these pens have roughly the same curve as PHR's as far as output vs current input.

Just FYI I got 54mW with an aixiz 405-445 lens, but it wasn't possible to thread it deep enough in the housing to focus it properly. a 'wrong' aixiz 445 lens (i.e. coated for red) scored 42mW

My conclusion was there's really no point in trying to pot mod these, if the one I dismantled was typical, the drivers in them are already cranked almost all the way up. Squeezing another 5-10mw out of them isn't really worth it once you figure that you're almost guaranteed to break them getting them apart.

thanks for the links..... does anyone know about how many hours do these specific pens last? is the beam visible in darkness?

Blade said:

thanks for the links..... does anyone know about how many hours do these specific pens last? is the beam visible in darkness?

Click to expand...

The beam is slightly visible in darkness. They should last hundreds to thousands of hours depending on various factors. You'll probably get bored with it before it dies on you.

yeah, I can see my greenies in the dark outside and even better indoors in a pitch black room. The blue is barely visible to my eyes outside from directly behind it but I am fairly sensitive to blue light.

Ordered one. You should get a commission from the seller Razako.

I can see the beam from my 46mw 405nm pen fairly well in the dark.

ZapU said:

Ordered one. You should get a commission from the seller Razako.

Click to expand...

lol yeah. When I first posted this only like 20 had been sold. Now it's up to 133+

qumefox said:

Heh. I donno

I did tear one of the 405's apart tonight. What I found wasn't really worthy of starting it's own thread so I'll just say here.

The drivers max out at 85mA. This one was set at 72mA from the factory and doing 42mw.

Unfortunately I couldn't torture test the diode. I broke the + off getting it out of the host.. whoops. Actually I tore the switch, a SMD cap, and some traces off the driver too heh. But since fixing stuff like this is what I do for a living, repairing the driver wasn't that big a deal.

After replacing the dead diode with a PHR though. at 85mA, it was putting out 51mW. That's roughly in line with the original diode at doing 42mw at 72mA so apparently the diodes in these pens have roughly the same curve as PHR's as far as output vs current input.

Just FYI I got 54mW with an aixiz 405-445 lens, but it wasn't possible to thread it deep enough in the housing to focus it properly. a 'wrong' aixiz 445 lens (i.e. coated for red) scored 42mW

My conclusion was there's really no point in trying to pot mod these, if the one I dismantled was typical, the drivers in them are already cranked almost all the way up. Squeezing another 5-10mw out of them isn't really worth it once you figure that you're almost guaranteed to break them getting them apart.

Click to expand...

I'm not interested in turning up as much as turning down, to about 20mW ideally.

How hard was it truly to get the parts out?

pullbangdead said:

I'm not interested in turning up as much as turning down, to about 20mW ideally.

How hard was it truly to get the parts out?

Click to expand...

I was able to access the potentiometer with out taking the pen apart.

If you have a dremel and a can of compressed air it's easy.

locate the spot and drill, use the air to blow out any metal fragments and use a tiny precision screw driver to adjust the pot.

I didn't turn the power down but turned it up and the dot is noticeably brighter then my 66mW Ray Foss FLX laser

that shiny grease looking stuff around the hole is just black paint from a marker that's still wet


I'll put a few beam and dot shot pictures as soon as I can.

Razako said:

The beam is slightly visible in darkness. They should last hundreds to thousands of hours depending on various factors. You'll probably get bored with it before it dies on you.

Click to expand...

Depends on what diode they are using. If they're something like surplus PHR's.. yes, they'll last a looong time. If they're these 20mw diodes I see for sale at various places, they're being overdriven and probably won't have much of a lifespan. It's one of the reasons I really wanted to torture test the diode out of one to see which it was.

pullbangdead said:

I'm not interested in turning up as much as turning down, to about 20mW ideally.

How hard was it truly to get the parts out?

Click to expand...

Without fabricating a puller or destroying the host... very. I did it with a small metal rod that would slide past the driver up to the back of the brass module and a sand filled hammer. Actually this worked ok up until the very end when the module popped out of the housing and twisted. This is what the pin got broken off, etc. If you had the time and the interest, you could fabricate a puller with aixiz threads to thread into the module in place of the lens and pull it out.

fullinfusion said:

I was able to access the potentiometer with out taking the pen apart.

If you have a dremel and a can of compressed air it's easy.

locate the spot and drill, use the air to blow out any metal fragments and use a tiny precision screw driver to adjust the pot.

I didn't turn the power down but turned it up and the dot is noticeably brighter then my 66mW Ray Foss FLX laser

that shiny grease looking stuff around the hole is just black paint from a marker that's still wet


I'll put a few beam and dot shot pictures as soon as I can.

Click to expand...

That has to be a green. The pot's on the wrong end of the driver to be a BR driver, at least the one the pen I dissected had in it. Wish I'd remembered to take pics.

Tonight I got the hacked module with the PHR and the repaired driver back in the housing though. Externally it looks about the same as it ever did except the QC sticker is gone.

Here it is with the driver doing all it can do with a PHR diode. 50mw is it.



And apparently my camera actually sees 405nm about the same way my eyes do.

fullinfusion said:

I was able to access the potentiometer with out taking the pen apart.

If you have a dremel and a can of compressed air it's easy.

locate the spot and drill, use the air to blow out any metal fragments and use a tiny precision screw driver to adjust the pot.

I didn't turn the power down but turned it up and the dot is noticeably brighter then my 66mW Ray Foss FLX laser

that shiny grease looking stuff around the hole is just black paint from a marker that's still wet

Click to expand...

This may sound stupid, but how did you find the pot? Did you partially dissect the host until you could see the pot and make an estimation from there on where to drill?