Odd "whine" coming from 1.9 watt 445nm Guides-man.

I picked this laser(1.9W 445nm Guides-man) up a while ago here on the forums. It has been a great burner! Mainly I used it to kill stink bugs that are hanging on my highrise ceiling(Burns their legs off then I get them when they fall). Lately I have been using it a lot, though not outside smart duty cycles. It started making this noise off and on again a few weeks after I got it, now it's all the time.

Here a Video of the Laser operating so you can see what I mean:

Odd Wine From Laser - YouTube

I take it the diode may be burning up? The output still seams strong, though I have no LPM to test it against. It's diffidently still stronger then my 1W Spartan.

It uses dual V5 Flex drives heat sinked to a quarter. I bought this from weidmark.

Re: Odd "wine" coming from 1.9 watt 445nm Guides-man.

Odd, I would venture a guess that its more like a driver, but then again I am not even really qualified to venture a guess.

But, id it were my laser I would take it apart and see if the sound seems to be coming from one or both of the drivers or the diode.

Re: Odd "wine" coming from 1.9 watt 445nm Guides-man.

My guess is that there is either A) a fragile connection to ONE of the drivers so the other driver has to pull all of the load, which puts it under stress and makes the inductor whine, or B) the battery is dying and it is having to pull more and more current which is stressing the inductor, causing it to whine. Either way, I would first charge the batteries then inspect the drivers independently. It's certainly not the diode (diodes don't whine!).

Re: Odd "wine" coming from 1.9 watt 445nm Guides-man.

It´s the coil of the driver making this sound. Nothing to worry about. But if you want the sound to desappear, you will have to dissassemble the laser and add some blobs of paint on the coils by making sure the paint goes down between all the windings. You can use two combound epoxy too.

But after doing this let the paint or epoxy dry before turning on the laser again.

Re: Odd "wine" coming from 1.9 watt 445nm Guides-man.

Odd "wine" coming from 1.9 watt 445nm Guides-man.

Click to expand...

Pardon me good sir, but it appears
your laser has developed a
fermented grape leak.

Thanks guys!

Yeah...I'm so used to my iPad fixing the spelling I get lazy!

if the driver has a solid capacitor. it could be leaking. capacitors tend to whine when they leak.

I know this thread is starting get old but I had the same thing happening to me this weekend. I had the same weird whining sound coming from my 445 dual V5 flex build.

It didn't do it at first but after a little while of run time the power went from 2.1W all the way down to 900mW and bounced around in between there. I charged the battery and got the same thing. Then I switched the battery and it worked. There other battery works fine in other lower power builds but not the high power 445. I guess the battery can't handle the higher load.

jnhowett said:

I know this thread is starting get old but I had the same thing happening to me this weekend. I had the same weird whining sound coming from my 445 dual V5 flex build.

It didn't do it at first but after a little while of run time the power went from 2.1W all the way down to 900mW and bounced around in between there. I charged the battery and got the same thing. Then I switched the battery and it worked. There other battery works fine in other lower power builds but not the high power 445. I guess the battery can't handle the higher load.

Click to expand...

I bought a "Hi-Draw" Battery off ebay and it works great:

18650 LI-ION FLASHLIGHT BATTERY XML LED IMR SAFE -HIGHEST CAPACITY IMR AVAILABLE | eBay

I get a similar "whine" out of a AA battery box I have which lends me to think it's the switch on that.