plexus
0
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2007
- Messages
- 441
- Points
- 28
I purchased this laser from wannaburn directly from a for sale ad he has on the forum. The promise of a laser that takes a single AAA sized battery and can output a watt of visible light energy was a far greater force than having $200 in my pocket. So I gave that to him and he gave me this promise. Fair trade.
It indeed turns out to be kept promise. And, its offical... this laser will do 1.5W peak:
Spectacular! Think about it... its just a little mind-boggling. But anyway, the thing exists, its in my hand and its doing 1.5W so what can anyone say?
Wannaburn has taken a Trustfire AAA flashlight host and built in a 445nm LD using a standard Aixiz module and a custom designed and commercially manufactured driver, figured out how to stuff these, elegantly, into this host and make it go like fire!
From what I understand his driver is a boost only driver which allows it to remain cool, the Achilles heal for these laser diodes and hosts. Those power driven 445's dissipate a lot of heat and the effectiveness of the laser (and its lifespan) are reduced as heat increases. So that is the key with this little guy: heat dissipation is the crux. well, and cramming all this technology into such a small host. He did it!
The driver is extra-extra-special because it has 3 power modes! Low is 5kHz pulse, medium is 5Hz pulse and High is full on, baby! On my laser I am getting, average over about 10 seconds, 150mW, 580mW and 1310mW, respectively.
... just blows my mind ...
Well, and, the driver is even extra-extra-extra-special because when you don't have a 3.7V 10440 handy for full power, you can plunk in a measly regular AAA and get about 5-10mW out of it. now if you know this LD this is quite great because its hard to get that low current just right. Bing bang bong, its done!
So for $200 including shipping... well can you see how that money just vanished so quick!
And now some pictures:
Oh and this laser doesn't have a name so I am calling it the WB-SSS for Wannaburn Smallest Stainless Steel. So there!
As you can see its very small. That the WB-SSS compared to a WL Arctic and a Jayrob SH-032 (another great host build by the way, uses 18650 and a copper heatsink and copper LD mount for maximum heat dissipation)
The standard Aixiz focus ring looks very nice on this host. I really dislike the way it looks on most other hosts because its cheap and cheesy. But on this host, it fits. But could you imagine if the ring was completely smooth on the outside. MMM. but as it is its not bad. And the knurling points lightly touch the inside surface of the host which provides some nice mechanical feedback when you are focusing and helps to hold the focus ring steady if your teflon tape starts to wear.
With the stock lens that comes with it, an Aixiz 405 glass, you can use the included spring which provides some added tightness to the lens so it stays but. I don't use this lens in this laser (keep reading....)
Batteries. For full power you need 10440. Now maybe you will have better luck than I but I could not find a retailer in Toronto that sells these. This was a bummer because for about 2 weeks, or was it 3, I could only use this laser with an AAA and try and satiate myself with ~5mw. oh boy. I ended up ordering them from Lighthounds.com but they were taking forever to get to me. So I decided to try again with google.
I found a retailer that sells them locally! However, they only do mailorder or you can arrange to pick up at this big flea market in the suburbs. So I ordered 4 AW 10440 unprotected cells. I am comfortable with unprotected cells because I pay attention. I think the unprotected cells might let a little more current flow too, which for laser is a good thing.
The place I got the batteries is happyvapor.com. They sell these funky replacements for cigarettes that vaporize various oils. the vapor makers use various batteries including the 10440. they also have 14500 which I need for my LPM so i got a couple of those too.
http://www.happyvaper.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=battery&Search.x=0&Search.y=0
In the meantime (today) the other batteries showed up so now I have 10 10440's to mess around with. this laser really stresses the batteries so I don't expect a battery to last as long as in normal use. we shall see.
Jayrob makes a great lens called the 405-g-1. Its a G-1 lens which I don't actually know the history of but is a quality optic with good AR coating and its a single aspheric lens compared to the 3 lens design of the Aixiz. Being one lens, and well made, it provides about 30% more power output. But it's not cheap but definitely worth it.
With the 405-g-1 the focus is very close to the LD so you can't really use a spring unless you cut it down quite a bit. I choose not to use one because I have had a spring take out an LD at one point (the LD lens is very fragile). But with this lens I do indeed get the 30% increase hence the 1.5W peak!
Here are some beamshots with a bunch of other lasers:
And some live power tests with the Aixis and Jayrob lens:
Here is a power output vs host temp graph. The LPM is a Kenometer Pro with Ophir sensor. The temperature meter is an Apollo II BT302 2 channel K-type temp logger. The graphs were captured in real time. The host temp, measured at close to the location of the LD, reached about 50C after 72 seconds. Power dropped from 1589mw to about 900mw (a drop of about 45%).
However Nicha rates the max operating temp of the LD to be 30C which corresponds to a run-time of 22 seconds, power of about 1150mW.
It takes the laser about 20 mins to drop from 50C to 30C in 24C ambient temp with no air flow. I think if you want to play it safe the duty cycle should be 25 sec on, 5 mins off - this will ensure you are running the laser in a safe temperature range.
Here is a cool-down charge from about 50C. its interesting to see the rise of about 3.5C after the laser has been turned off. i assume this is the time it takes for the LD temp to reach the outside of the host (but im not sure). As you can see it takes a long time to cool down to room temp of 24C.
I think you see the rationale for the recommended duty cycle to be on 25 sec, off 5 mins, to keep the laser in around the 30C +/- mark. this might make you skeptical of commercial manufactures suggested duty cycle, and you should be concerned, you can see that it takes a long time to cool a laser down, and this little laser uses less thermal mass than most others, so other laser will take even longer!
This is the laser:
http://laserpointerforums.com/f39/sold-out-smallest-most-powerfull-445nm-pens-61622.html
This is the lens:
http://laserpointerforums.com/f64/fs-405-g-1-glass-lens-mod-31-increase-vs-aixiz-22497.html
It indeed turns out to be kept promise. And, its offical... this laser will do 1.5W peak:
Spectacular! Think about it... its just a little mind-boggling. But anyway, the thing exists, its in my hand and its doing 1.5W so what can anyone say?
Wannaburn has taken a Trustfire AAA flashlight host and built in a 445nm LD using a standard Aixiz module and a custom designed and commercially manufactured driver, figured out how to stuff these, elegantly, into this host and make it go like fire!
From what I understand his driver is a boost only driver which allows it to remain cool, the Achilles heal for these laser diodes and hosts. Those power driven 445's dissipate a lot of heat and the effectiveness of the laser (and its lifespan) are reduced as heat increases. So that is the key with this little guy: heat dissipation is the crux. well, and cramming all this technology into such a small host. He did it!
The driver is extra-extra-special because it has 3 power modes! Low is 5kHz pulse, medium is 5Hz pulse and High is full on, baby! On my laser I am getting, average over about 10 seconds, 150mW, 580mW and 1310mW, respectively.
... just blows my mind ...
Well, and, the driver is even extra-extra-extra-special because when you don't have a 3.7V 10440 handy for full power, you can plunk in a measly regular AAA and get about 5-10mW out of it. now if you know this LD this is quite great because its hard to get that low current just right. Bing bang bong, its done!
So for $200 including shipping... well can you see how that money just vanished so quick!
And now some pictures:
Oh and this laser doesn't have a name so I am calling it the WB-SSS for Wannaburn Smallest Stainless Steel. So there!
As you can see its very small. That the WB-SSS compared to a WL Arctic and a Jayrob SH-032 (another great host build by the way, uses 18650 and a copper heatsink and copper LD mount for maximum heat dissipation)
The standard Aixiz focus ring looks very nice on this host. I really dislike the way it looks on most other hosts because its cheap and cheesy. But on this host, it fits. But could you imagine if the ring was completely smooth on the outside. MMM. but as it is its not bad. And the knurling points lightly touch the inside surface of the host which provides some nice mechanical feedback when you are focusing and helps to hold the focus ring steady if your teflon tape starts to wear.
With the stock lens that comes with it, an Aixiz 405 glass, you can use the included spring which provides some added tightness to the lens so it stays but. I don't use this lens in this laser (keep reading....)
Batteries. For full power you need 10440. Now maybe you will have better luck than I but I could not find a retailer in Toronto that sells these. This was a bummer because for about 2 weeks, or was it 3, I could only use this laser with an AAA and try and satiate myself with ~5mw. oh boy. I ended up ordering them from Lighthounds.com but they were taking forever to get to me. So I decided to try again with google.
I found a retailer that sells them locally! However, they only do mailorder or you can arrange to pick up at this big flea market in the suburbs. So I ordered 4 AW 10440 unprotected cells. I am comfortable with unprotected cells because I pay attention. I think the unprotected cells might let a little more current flow too, which for laser is a good thing.
The place I got the batteries is happyvapor.com. They sell these funky replacements for cigarettes that vaporize various oils. the vapor makers use various batteries including the 10440. they also have 14500 which I need for my LPM so i got a couple of those too.
http://www.happyvaper.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=battery&Search.x=0&Search.y=0
In the meantime (today) the other batteries showed up so now I have 10 10440's to mess around with. this laser really stresses the batteries so I don't expect a battery to last as long as in normal use. we shall see.
Jayrob makes a great lens called the 405-g-1. Its a G-1 lens which I don't actually know the history of but is a quality optic with good AR coating and its a single aspheric lens compared to the 3 lens design of the Aixiz. Being one lens, and well made, it provides about 30% more power output. But it's not cheap but definitely worth it.
With the 405-g-1 the focus is very close to the LD so you can't really use a spring unless you cut it down quite a bit. I choose not to use one because I have had a spring take out an LD at one point (the LD lens is very fragile). But with this lens I do indeed get the 30% increase hence the 1.5W peak!
Here are some beamshots with a bunch of other lasers:
And some live power tests with the Aixis and Jayrob lens:
Here is a power output vs host temp graph. The LPM is a Kenometer Pro with Ophir sensor. The temperature meter is an Apollo II BT302 2 channel K-type temp logger. The graphs were captured in real time. The host temp, measured at close to the location of the LD, reached about 50C after 72 seconds. Power dropped from 1589mw to about 900mw (a drop of about 45%).
However Nicha rates the max operating temp of the LD to be 30C which corresponds to a run-time of 22 seconds, power of about 1150mW.
It takes the laser about 20 mins to drop from 50C to 30C in 24C ambient temp with no air flow. I think if you want to play it safe the duty cycle should be 25 sec on, 5 mins off - this will ensure you are running the laser in a safe temperature range.
Here is a cool-down charge from about 50C. its interesting to see the rise of about 3.5C after the laser has been turned off. i assume this is the time it takes for the LD temp to reach the outside of the host (but im not sure). As you can see it takes a long time to cool down to room temp of 24C.
I think you see the rationale for the recommended duty cycle to be on 25 sec, off 5 mins, to keep the laser in around the 30C +/- mark. this might make you skeptical of commercial manufactures suggested duty cycle, and you should be concerned, you can see that it takes a long time to cool a laser down, and this little laser uses less thermal mass than most others, so other laser will take even longer!
This is the laser:
http://laserpointerforums.com/f39/sold-out-smallest-most-powerfull-445nm-pens-61622.html
This is the lens:
http://laserpointerforums.com/f64/fs-405-g-1-glass-lens-mod-31-increase-vs-aixiz-22497.html
Last edited:
