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- Dec 23, 2007
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A TEC is not practical in a portable. Lets just assume a few things here.
For an average 445 build you are feeding around 1.5A into the diode at around 4.5V. That calculates out to something around 5W of heat. Assuming 1.5W of that heat escapes as light leaves you with 3.5W of heat from the diode to dissipate. Now, let's assume you have a super efficient TEC, somewhere along the lines of 20%. You would need to power that TEC with more than 18 watts of power to keep the diode from heating up (Your not even cooling yet!) Now, if you have a 5V TEC you would need 3-4 amps to keep that diode from burning up.
So, you have the driver for the diode producing heat. The driver for the TEC making heat (You can't just hook the TEC up without a driver, you would freeze the diode over with condensation or just burn the TEC up.) The TEC itself making buttloads of heat and the battery making heat from the insane load you are putting on it. In short, that host is getting hot FAST. Any sort of duty cycle you would have gained will be lost because a portable laser is not much good if it's too hot to hold.
In a "lab laser" a TEC makes sense. In a portable it does not.
6 TECs in a portable is just ludicrous, and not in a good way.
For an average 445 build you are feeding around 1.5A into the diode at around 4.5V. That calculates out to something around 5W of heat. Assuming 1.5W of that heat escapes as light leaves you with 3.5W of heat from the diode to dissipate. Now, let's assume you have a super efficient TEC, somewhere along the lines of 20%. You would need to power that TEC with more than 18 watts of power to keep the diode from heating up (Your not even cooling yet!) Now, if you have a 5V TEC you would need 3-4 amps to keep that diode from burning up.
So, you have the driver for the diode producing heat. The driver for the TEC making heat (You can't just hook the TEC up without a driver, you would freeze the diode over with condensation or just burn the TEC up.) The TEC itself making buttloads of heat and the battery making heat from the insane load you are putting on it. In short, that host is getting hot FAST. Any sort of duty cycle you would have gained will be lost because a portable laser is not much good if it's too hot to hold.
In a "lab laser" a TEC makes sense. In a portable it does not.
6 TECs in a portable is just ludicrous, and not in a good way.