Laser tragedies: Share your story

One of mine was failing to turn on the power supply before I connected the laser diode, zap.... the voltage and CC were set right from earlier that day, but a voltage spike killed my diode.

Yeah, the power spikes. That reminds me of
another time with a 16X diode. The power
supply wires shorted out. When they
separated again, BAM! The spike went right
through the driver and killed the diode.

Dumb and dumber: I had my voltage pot and current adjustments turned to zero and turned on the power supply with a diode attached. Zap again, killed it. Learned it can voltage spike even when turned all the way down. Edit, this was with one of those cheap 3 amp LCD' China power supplies.

I haven't built my own laser yet. (I'm pretty new here.) However, remember when there were only little red laser pointers at the store and they were something like $10? Then, suddenly, there was talk about there being green lasers? (I'm refering to my own experience as this was all way before I knew anything at all about lasers and still don't know much...) I was like, oh my freaking god, I have to check this out. So, I bought a <5mw 2AAA greenie from Radio Shack (I forget the nm.) for about $50.
I bought it thinking (with my ignorance) that it was the holy grail of hand held lasers (because I never really looked around anywhere except the local electronics stores of which none had any powerful lasers.)

So, I buy this thing and play with it for a few days. Then, I come across this youtube video where this kid shows you how to drill a hole in the back side of it and turn this knob/screw head thing inside to make it burn stuff. I remember thinking: "Where's my drill!" Next thing I knew, I turned the knob and poof! No more green laser beam.
If only I knew about LPF back then: http://laserpointerforums.com/f51/pot-modding-faq-s-40510.html

But, if it wasn't for that rediculous thing I did to that horribly overpriced pointer, I never would have gotten back online and researched what I did wrong. Those searches are what eventually led me to discover that there are way more powerful (and more colorful) lasers out there. Not only that, but now I've joined this online community of people who actually like lasers even more than I do. (I never would've guessed that a site like this existed.) Now, the more threads I read, the more my interest grows and I'm sure, one day soon, I'll end up converting one of my spare rooms into a laser friendly work zone.

Stay tuned! More tragedies to come!

Another busted gas lasers
http://laserpointerforums.com/f43/rip-94373.html

I feel obligated to to post on here. It always pays with great reward to taaaake yooouuur tiiimmee. The latter is also true, but often with great dismay.
I’ve shamefully destroyed some diodes and drivers in my short time in this fascinating hobby:

Nano buck/boost driver - reverse polled
320mA X-Switch
BlackBuck3 - just today -idiotic mistake
1x LPC-840
2x LPC-826 - one just today

So far, bout $100 of sh#t :spank:

So painful...
Cheers,

SGD :beer:

Sorry to hear of your latest diode's demise, SGD, but I guarantee that if you keep building, that list will surely grow.
Thanks for sharing, it's a good reminder to take your time and double check your set-up! :yh:

I always try to check and double check everything as losing diodes and drivers to mistakes really gets my back up. It still happens, occasionally, but not too often. Can't remember, off hand, the last lose due to a mistake. Man, that really hurts.

My worst mistake was trying to clean the glass windows of a laser diode and pushed it in.

I once fried 2 $50 diodes one after the other in the exactly the same way (I am sometimes monke ok)

Not to thead necro but, shamefully I've killed (probably that is) 2 nubm 44v2's which just hurts my heart. The first one was from dicking around using far too thick of heat shrink with one of DTR's copper shift 20-22mm modules since the hole forthe wires is quite small. Twisted a pin off, no luck soldering it back on (think that ones gone from over heating it trying to solder, then clean off the mess of solder). The second one, just a week later was working great. Was messing about burning off the top layer of some brich plywood that was soaked in some sodium chlorate from a cell that ran on it months before (prepping it for the base of my laser engraver/cutter and didn't want an accidental fire). Thats when I noticed the dot go funky, turned it off, zoomed way out and sure enough when turned on got that 'mellting glass' look. Some how some flake of something stuck to my lens theads landed dead on the lense center and it melted a hole. Then to really bone it, broken the same damn pin taking it apart.

Managed to solder the pin back on however since I was worried that it would break off easily I dripped on a few drops of acetone saturated with ABS (white) plastic as a cememet. For reasons unknown to me once that was dry it no longer wrorked, but being determined, I have the module ontop of a test tube filled with acetone to soften/remove the abs so I can try again. I figure if I can get the pin on and remove the window/decan its better than tossing it in the grave yard. On a final note I missd out on getting a USA sourced nubm8 x8 block for just $ 69 on ebay since I had to wait until tommrow for the funds.

Yay I hate love lasers sometimes. At least my halfassed knife edged 2 headed engraver is working well enough, just gotta make the mirrors adjustable (melted pla to stick them to the pla gantry plate by eye and have only had to make one small adjustment to get em almost perfect) Or tear it apart if I can finnd my #2 co2 reflectionn mirror and toss the 40w tube on.