The "Sabre Twins" - Power/Wavelength Binned - Twin 445s

The "Sabre Twins"

I thought I would post a thread about a fun pair of builds I put together last weekend, when Lazeerer's awesome diode finds got me motivated to bin through some of mine too I binned about a dozen diodes and cherry picked the highest wavelength (455nm) and the highest power (2.7W peak) to do matching builds with.

Silver Twin: 455nm, ~2.0W +
Black Twin: 445nm, ~2.6W +







I love these 2x26650 hosts, they've got amazing heatsinking ability. At one stage last week, the black actually peaked at 2.7W. It sure can't hold on to that high rating for very long. About 10 seconds in and that power drops to around 2.5W. It's an amazingly efficient diode, and I'm running it at 1.8A. On of the interesting comments I would have about the twins is that the silver twin holds it's own brightness-wise, and perhaps even appears a tad brighter than the black twin. However, the coolest thing is that you can _definitely_ tell the difference in colour. You don't have to be a laser-enthusiast to see it either. The 445 looks purple compared to the 455.







Anyway, just wanted to share what I found to be a really fun set of builds

Very, very nice, Rhd! Cameras really don't capture slight Wavelength differences well I've noticed, or at least the LCD screens of our monitors don't reproduce them well.

Would love to see some high contrast (shot in the dark) photos of the two beam side by side.

These are awesome, Great job as usual...keep 'em coming!

I like twins!:eg:

Sigurthr said:

Very, very nice, Rhd! Cameras really don't capture slight Wavelength differences well I've noticed, or at least the LCD screens of our monitors don't reproduce them well.

Would love to see some high contrast (shot in the dark) photos of the two beam side by side.

Click to expand...

No, it's the camera - there's no way to catch the difference. I've tried every combination of RAW and JPG, on a few cameras, and it just can't pick up the difference.

But to the eye, it's clear. You would correctly differentiate them 100 times out of 100 with even a half-second glance. It's a clear colour difference, you don't have to struggle to see it. I really wish there was a way I could show people, because it's neat!

Pretty impressive! Did you use my sinks for these? XD

Wolfman29 said:

Pretty impressive! Did you use my sinks for these? XD

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Nope, sinks from Eud!

Ah! Well then! Not nearly as impressive.

Just messin'. Great builds, as always. Can't wait till I can start putting out builds like that!

Great job. Really like the look of the silver one.:beer:

awesome! I got one of flaminpyros diodes and that wavelength was definitly way higher than my other 445. Like you said, it looked purple in comparison! Very nice diode :drool:

beautiful beautiful lasers you got there, well done rhd! :beer:

Nice builds...

FYI... I know it looks cool... but it is not good practice
to mount a Thermopile into an enclosure...:yh:

Jerry

lasersbee said:

Nice builds...

FYI... I know it looks cool... but it is not good practice
to mount a Thermopile into an enclosure...:yh:

Jerry

Click to expand...

Thanks!

How come? I've seen it done a lot. There's tons of space inside that thing, and tons of air holes in the case.

2.7W from single diode ? Are they really that different ? What driver is that ?

DrSid said:

2.7W from single diode ? Are they really that different ? What driver is that ?

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Yep. Like I said in the thread, it really only holds on to that 2.7W briefly. After about 10 seconds it's down to 2.5W. But yes, these new diodes are quite different. People said that about the A140s over the A130s, and I think it was largely crazy talk. With the new projectors, it's a CLEAR difference - night and day. These are definitely more efficient diodes - I don't think anyone that's played with a few M/H/New A series diodes would hesitate for a minute to say that they're a new diode.

They're also, on average, about 5nm higher in wavelength.

And finally, it is really really clear to me that the most efficient of the diodes, tend to be the lower wavelength ones.