Ok I'll pm you about the heat sink/ spacer cause I have my own minimag. Could I send you my minimag when it's done and have you make me one? Btw I'm making a blu Ray if it makes any difference. Thanks Jay.

Will do...

Just let me know when your ready!

oh, what is the ground wire soldered to? cause it looks like you soldered it to the plastic piece. i asked this because it says that the ground wire is the negative lead, and a lead needs electricity, and its not going to get it from plastic. Also, what did you use to "clip" the black plastic piece down to size to fit the driver?
*edit* oh i just went back and read the first caption and got my answer for my first question (I think), but what is the ground wire then? (sorry i have a lot of questions)

I sent your heatsink/sleeve/o-ring today. (Thursday)


The host itself is ground. (battery negative to tail cap switch)

You need to get the negative input lead to the driver to touch the host.

I showed one way to do it, but you could also use the diode case pin if you wanted to. In this case, you would not need the little wire I showed. Just your positive lead to FlexDrive. And the negative would come from the diode.

As long as the heatsink is touching bare metal. If not, then you just file off the anodized area where the heatsink would be touching when tightened, and then you could use the diode case pin to be the 'ground to driver'. But the Mini Mag has anodized threads at the head, so this may be a problem for getting good ground from the host to heatsink.

A FlexDrive only needs one ground connection. Most of the time, I like to give ground from the host or pill, and then connect the positive and negative driver outputs to the diode. Because there is less chance of a bad connection, which could kill your diode.

But if you have a good connection from your heatsink to your host, then it is fine to get the ground from the diode case pin.

With a red build, the case pin is the negative. With a blu-ray build, you would just solder the case pin to the negative pin, and then the negaive wire to your FlexDrive...

See the 4th wiring diagram in the FlexDrive documentation:
http://hacylon.case.edu/ebay/laser_d..._V5_manual.pdf

so because i am building a blu ray, i would solder the positive lead like shown in your tutorial, and my negative to the lip of the mini mag?

You won't be able to solder to aluminum...

In my tutorial of how I did this build, I am using the bare metal aluminum sleeve to press against the wire that feeds the Flexdrive negative input. The sleeve is touching a bare metal point in the Mini Mag host. (at the tip of the barrel, on the inside - see first picture)

I got my phr build working on monday with your pocket mini kit. It looks really cool. I used a dot of hot glue to isolate the input and output lead of the flexdrive from the pill. i couldnt get the electric tape I had to wrap around the connections very well but the hot glue drop worked perfectly. Now I am considering a mini mag.

sorry I'm so bad at this, but that means that the negative lead comes from the metal sleeve?

Yeah the negative comes from the sleeve which is in contact with the case. The whole case of the flashlight is case negative.

so could i just tape the wire on to it because i cant solder to aluminum?

Just put a bit of glue on the plastic piece and glue the ground wire to edge of it. That way when you slip the spacer in it will pack good contact with the ground wire.

oh, cool ... so i don't have to do anything hard, just to make sure the wire (ill probably tin it) makes good contact with the spacer.

p.s. thanks for helping a laser noob like me, i really appreciate you helping me even though I do not know this stuff very well.

Yeah just make sure that the contact is good and make sure everything is insulated so there are no short circuits. Look at the pictures on the first page of this thread. They will help ALOT during the build. There is a picture showing where to put the glue on the ground wire.

no one ever answered my question, how do you clip the little black plastic piece off to fit the flexdrive

I just used diagonal snips...

samkinn, I sent your Mini Mag heatsink/spacer/o-ring today. (Wednesday)

Hope your build goes well!

Pretty neat kit. ordered one & now waiting for it to arrive. Going to use the kit to build my blu-ray mini mag laser once I have all the required components.