Damnit, Another One Down

Looks like i've managed to ruin my second 1W Spartan.

2 months ago, I was walking outside with it in my pocket on a really cold night. When I got back inside and decided to use it, I noticed a lot of fuzz around the dot. I emailed DL and asked them what to do, and Frank told me to clean the lens with a trimmed down wet Q-tip, since the lens is very prone to scratching. But before I got his email, I tried to clean it by very lightly dabbing it with a dry Q-tip. I wound up mauling it. The dot was horrible and the beam was worse. Turns out that the fuzz was just condensation, which I removed by putting 2 drops of water on the lens, draining it, then letting it dry.

Today I noticed what look like a little bit of dust appearing in the dot. Since my replacement Spartan's insides are higher up than my first one, I was able to reach and lighty dab at the lens with the lenspen mini pro 2 that came with my Arctic. I thought the soft tip would be safe to use on the lens. I was wrong, and it now seems to be slightly scratched. The beam quality is still good, but the dot is a little bigger now. It's not noticeable without laser shades, but it now takes a few more seconds to smoke my dresser from a little over 7 feet away. I will never again put anything down into my spatan except a miniscule amount of water for cleaning purposes.

Most people wouldn't really notice or care since it hardly affects the dot and performance, doesn't affect the beam quality, and isn't noticeable without looking at the dot from about 7 feet away with laser shades, but my mild OCD makes me care. If my laser isn't operating as efficiently as when I bought it, then in my eyes, it's ruined.

I always you canned air to clean my lens and use a dust cover. I would keep it covered whenever in use.

I wish Spartans came with a lens cap like Arctics do. I'm going to get an Arctic sooner or later.

hmm, this might be a long stretch...but have you tried polishing the window using a little toothpaste? Be sure to use paste, not gel... its a "diatomic" method to fixing minute scratches. I'm wearing glasses repaired by them and these appear to hold up well

What you can do (and fiber optic technicians do to clean teh ends of the fiber optic cable is use 99.99% alcohal because water has those nasty little impurities in it that leave water spots on your lense)

What lens do they use? is it an aixiz? they are cheap and easy to replace.

Illuminum3415 said:

hmm, this might be a long stretch...but have you tried polishing the window using a little toothpaste? Be sure to use paste, not gel... its a "diatomic" method to fixing minute scratches. I'm wearing glasses repaired by them and these appear to hold up well

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I don't know..... if hes scratching it with everything else, He will end up messing up the lens more.

You should learn that if it's not Broken don't fix it. If you got 1 tiny scratch and you honestly don't have a LPM, then your perception of the length of time it takes to burn is skewed.

You don't seem very adept to being able to fix things so your better off leaving it alone unless you "Really "Break it. Better to have a working Laser than a non working pile of 1/2 broken parts.

Raiden Gekkou send the spartan to another forum member, and let then work on it for you.

The less you touch the lens and mess with it, the better it is for you and the laser.

The lens of the Spartan is very deep inside the host, and I really can't understand how it can catch dirt. However, if it happens that it's got some microscopic dust on it, I advise to leave it there. Messing with it will only worsen the situation, IMHO.

Generally, I don't think it's a good idea to mess with these delicate babies (lasers) too much, assemble and disassemble them, unless you really know what you are doing or that you don't mind spending money on a new one is case you broke the old one.

Illuminum3415 said:

hmm, this might be a long stretch...but have you tried polishing the window using a little toothpaste? Be sure to use paste, not gel... its a "diatomic" method to fixing minute scratches. I'm wearing glasses repaired by them and these appear to hold up well

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I don't think that would be a good idea, because it's pretty much impossible for me to apply it without scratching it even further, and I have no idea how i'd remove the excess toothpaste.

Krogith said:

I don't know..... if hes scratching it with everything else, He will end up messing up the lens more.

You should learn that if it's not Broken don't fix it. If you got 1 tiny scratch and you honestly don't have a LPM, then your perception of the length of time it takes to burn is skewed.

You don't seem very adept to being able to fix things so your better off leaving it alone unless you "Really "Break it. Better to have a working Laser than a non working pile of 1/2 broken parts.

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There's nothing wrong with my perception of time. I've done a couple tests and found that certain things won't burn at a certain length anymore, and an LPM honestly has nothing to do with it.

Coherent Light said:

Raiden Gekkou send the spartan to another forum member, and let then work on it for you.

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I might have to do that.

Good Luck in whatever you decide to do. I know how frustrating it is when a high dollar Toy/Pleasure Device no longer works correctly.:beer::beer:

Okay, nevermind.

Raiden Gekkou said:

I don't think that would be a good idea, because it's pretty much impossible for me to apply it without scratching it even further, and I have no idea how i'd remove the excess toothpaste.



There's nothing wrong with my perception of time. I've done a couple tests and found that certain things won't burn at a certain length anymore, and an LPM honestly has nothing to do with it.



I might have to do that.

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Have you Broken almost ever laser you have owned now? I see in your tag that you broke your arctic?

I'm sorry to hear that bud. If something breaks I'd send it to a more experienced member to fix it. It sounds like you should stop trying.

A good way to practice... is get some already broken things and try and make then into something. Like a broken computer or something. And after you successfully make a few projects that you made a broken thing into something else that works, you'll have practice with small parts and fixing things and then you can not break so many of your nice things you paid good $$ for. :beer: hope you get it fixed bud

Yeah or just keep buying them and taking them apart. Eventually you'll get good enough that you won't break them

Krogith said:

Have you Broken almost ever laser you have owned now? I see in your tag that you broke your arctic?

I'm sorry to hear that bud. If something breaks I'd send it to a more experienced member to fix it. It sounds like you should stop trying.

A good way to practice... is get some already broken things and try and make then into something. Like a broken computer or something. And after you successfully make a few projects that you made a broken thing into something else that works, you'll have practice with small parts and fixing things and then you can not break so many of your nice things you paid good $$ for. :beer: hope you get it fixed bud

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Actually, the Arctic broke itself because it was shoddily made. It barely had a solid 5 minutes of runtime on it, and it just crapped out suddenly the day after I got it.

WTF? Putting water in the lens, draining it, and letting it dry. Where do you get these absurd ideas from?

Use some lint free cloth and rubbing alcohol. Compressed air if you have to knock lint off. Don't go pouring water in your lasers. Sheesh