Interest guage - 200mw 660nm red pointers...

tmiller said:

Ok, it was a long wooden safety match, red tip, and I sharpied it. I just ran the test again and it lit in less than 1 second.

Just for note, I had to turn the lens out 1 turn from how it was originally focused. This placed the focus about 10 inches out from the front of the laser. At 10 feet, the beam diverges to about 1.5 inches.

Tom

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tmiller said:

I'll see if I can post a picture sometime today if I have some time. But I see the main problem. Take a look at the first post that greg made. The front of the laser is metal. Then there is a short plastic segment that has a threaded portion that screws into the alum. battery barrel. To make the positive connection to the battery section, there is a small brass washer with the positive wire soldered to it. When assembled, the spring makes contact to the neg battery contact and the brass washer contacts the positive battery case.

It seems that the washer on the broken unit is about three times thicker then the unit in Greg's picture, thus limiting the amout of threads for the mating of the parts. So when the unit was damaged in shipping, it just pulled the threaded part out, stripping the last thread in the plastic part.

Other than that, it looks to be a well made unit. If I can get a thinner washer, I think it will go back together just fine.

Now, I am waiting to see if anyone else opens their laser up to see if I can get to the current regulator.

On another note, my two laser diodes arrived today. Again,  a big thank you to Greg.


Regards,
Tom

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Tropmonky said:

I received my "Broken Laser" yesterday.  Here is my review.  Take it for what it’s worth.
Condition: in the electrostatic bag (opened to test from Greg I presume).  The laser was in two halves as Greg said he received them.  Upon my personal inspection here is what I found out.  There is a brass ring that goes around the end of the battery tube where the laser head screws in.  The brass ring was 2-3 times thicker than it should have been.  This means that there was all of one or two REALLY tiny threads holding the metal battery tube on. . . .   that’s where the laser broke.  When looking in the battery tube and on the laser head where the threads are I could see left over residue from GLUE.  It looks as though they tried to Glue this area together, and the glue had no chance getting through shipping together…   I cleaned the glue off of the metal battery tube with a wire brush tip on my dremel, and then used a Nylon brush tip on the laser head threads being It’s made of plastic so it’s non conductive.  I then proceeded to grind down the brass ring that conducts the power to the laser.  It’s about 1/3 the size it used to be and now leaves plenty of threads free to grab onto the battery holding tube.   Then I popped some CR123a batts in and turned her on, BOOM nice bright red goodness coming out the end.  Quite a fat beam, too fat to light matches without culminating it.  I grabbed a plastic screwdriver and tuned the beam to around 17in from the laser.  I was able to burn through trash bags with ease, black anything instantly starts smoking and a sharpie match lights almost instantly.   I will be taking pics and vids later and will post them up on my google pages to view.

-Kyle

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