Anyone tried a high amp pulsed output driver?

I am new to this board, but from what I see, everyone seems to be running the laser diodes in cw mode. Most all the diodes being used in the laser pointers could be run at significantly higher outputs if a pulsed driver was being used.

I did a brief search on a suitable circuit andf found this one. http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~arik/Pulse.pdf

With the exception of the heatsink required, I think this can be built for un der $20 and it could supply 2.5 amps at its low end just by changing some values in the shown schematic. And it can run up to a 100 amps as shown (it shows 5->100 amps in the supplied schematic).

Richard

Yep. There are almost more high current pulsed designs out there than there are for CW. But for most of us here, a pulsed output with high peak power is generally not noticeable compared to a stable CW beam. With pulsed operation - there is the hard-to-ignore component of your laser becoming much more dangerous than it previously was - solely because peak power changed even while average power remains about the same.

And, if you are going to build one; do not allow the diode voltage to go to zero, instead - for example 6 V, 100mA (on) and 5.0 V, 20mA (off) for 405nm In : GaN BD laser diode, you actually want the diode to stay on but rather if you wanna cut it out, you want it a little below LED threshold, then back to the desired current setting when on. That way you don't fry the expensive diode, also that's how the disc burners last very long, by alternating between LED threshold and high power lasing level when blasting the data bits onto disc.