Spyder III Arctic diode/driver/heatsink rebuild.

My Arctic III had become unreliable, turning on and off on me when it felt like it, and doing all sorts of odd stuff, not to mention terrible beam characteristics. I decided to gut it and toss in an A140 diode and microboost driver. Its running at 1100~ma and is tons more powerful than the diode/driver that came out of the box. It burns wood unfocused and all that good stuff. :wave: :wave: :wave:

I had a custom heatsink machined by Jayrob(THANKS!!!!) to fit the inner barrel of the host. It is 20mm OD, 40mm in length, and sized for an Aixiz module on the ID. If I were to have another heatsink machined, I'd have probably gotten it 50mm in length to bring the lens up a bit more.

The heatsink fits the module perfect, and with the diode mounted directly to the driverboard, I can thermal paste the microboost right to the ID of the heatsink for adequate heatsinking. The OD of the heatsink fits beautifully too, leaving just enough room for a small layer of thermal paste which presses nicely with the setscrew in the spyder body. The spyder host has a small hole perfect for a set screw. I opened it up wide enough to fit a 1/4" 20 thread setscrew, and its got enough grip to put some good push into the heatsink to make good thermal contact with the paste on the other side.

The lens sits pretty deep, which is why I suggest getting it the heatsink about 50mm in length. The setscrew hole is pretty far down so 40mm from the screw brings the heatsink about an inch into the hole . I had planned on having it deep down to help some of the lens flare get cut out by the small aperture cap, but 40mm from the setscrew it still a bit deep.

I thermal epoxied the outer heatsink of the host to the main barrel so that the fins would actually do something instead of sitting there doing nothing as they did out of the factory. The outer piece of aluminum was just superglued onto the main barrel, giving little help with thermal dissipation. I used a bit too much paste though, and it oozed out at the bottom. Going to have to get a wire brush and get it out, or just spray the host over with some high temp engine block gloss black.

Ive had this run for about 30 mins straight right now, and its only slightly warm to the touch.

Anyway, pics speak better than words. Heres the assembly and the so-far-final product. Beam pics to follow when it gets dark.

Nice, can you still ses the set screw? looks like you had trouble there...

Must have been hard to get it apart, I heard they were press fit extremely tightly.

That's one messy laptop.:crackup:

Nope the setscrew is hidden under the ring part of the batter identification collar(which no longer works by the way. :-( The only part that was a pain about the setscrew was shaving it down to fit flush. I could have done it a lot cleaner by taking it out first, but its hidden.

Yea the laptop has seen a lot of work and abuse.

I didnt have too much trouble getting it apart. I used lock pliers and thick cloth. A firm twist and it all spun right out.

Beam pics incoming in a few mins! Just started raining too, pool reflections are awesome.

You are going to need to re-size your pictures to 800 X 600 Max.
Your pics are larger than my screen and it is a PITA to read your
text...:cryyy:

Jerry

sorry about that, resizing them right now..

How much would you charge to perform this mod?

Honestly I dont know if I'd even suggest it unless you really like the spyder host, or you can find one to use as a host without the internals. Its pretty costly because the stock internals are pretty much scrapped unless there is a better way of removing the driverboard than just forcefully pulling on it and snapping the battery spring. If you really want me to build this for you, you'd need to supply the diode/assembly, a microboost driver and one of jayrobs heatsinks to complete it. May as well just build it in a new host and keep two working 445s instead of gutting a working spyder.

:kewlpics: of the pool thanks for sharing those

well the spider i was speaking of actually died.

ok well then I'd say something around the cost of the parts, shipping, plus $30 or so. What exactly happened to the original laser that it died and you cant return it?

idk. The diode just burned out after a few days. It had ridiculous power tho, i think they had set the current way high. Because I could point it at black leather and the thick bottomed cd cases from over 30 feet away and it would still burn. It only took like 7 seconds to burn a hole through the cd case at 35 feet and it was a large hole. Mine was definitely overspec.

Hey plexus:

plexus said:

hi there. nice post and interesting retofitting in the arctic! excellent. i have a question...

is the arctic press fit together? where are the joints? once you get it apart can you get it back together tightly?

thanks!

Click to expand...

I cant reply to your pms. you have it set to block them. it isnt press fit but just simply epoxied together. terrible thermal transfer to even the fins of the heatsink. Little bit of heat and some padded locking pliers snapped the glue and the parts slipped right apart.

When you took it apart, did you happen to find any kind of peltier in there? Wicked says their lasers are thermoelectric cooled.

Its ironic that all over LPF people are crapping on the S3, yet there's an add for one right at the bottom of this page

No peltier of any kind. Its barely a heatsink and it is pretty much superglued to an external heatsink sleeve. Horrible heat transfer. After remaking it, it has no heat issues after like 45 mind constant run time.

Hey mhorn, I was wondering. How much did Jayrob charge to make that custom heatsink? I was thinking of eventually doing this to my Arctic as well. Maybe running dual flexdrives:eg: