LED drivers for Lasers

Hello all,

I'm trying to build a dimmable laser driver using PWM that can power 3 lasers, red, green, and blue in a handheld. My question is can LED drivers such as this be used to power laser diodes? I don't think there would be a problem but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Some LED drivers are suitable. The only way to know is to looking at the startup spike on a scope.

Is there any way to protect the LD from the startup spike? Or should I just look for another driver? Also, what is the typical allowed spike for a LD?

Also what circuit design software do you recommend? First time doing this so there's a lot to learn.

Thanks!

most led drivers are rough at start up simply because led's can handle it but laser diodes on the other hand are current hungry so if you have a driver that ramps up current with out it being regulated it will draw it right in and kill it self lol And all spikes are bad for diodes, just go with a different driver

noobphaser215 said:

most led drivers are rough at start up simply because led's can handle it but laser diodes on the other hand are current hungry so if you have a driver that ramps up current with out it being regulated it will draw it right in and kill it self lol And all spikes are bad for diodes, just go with a different driver

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I think I'll just use this to drive my green and blue lasers and PWM them using the enable pin at around 10kHz. I'll probably generate the PWM signals using an Arduino.

The red is where I run into problems though. Since I'm using a single cell Li-ion battery, 4.2-3.5V and the red diode runs at 3.2V and there is only a 0.3V voltage difference. I cannot use the boost drive for that. I thought of using a LM317 as a linear regulator but it was suggested here that it would not work since the voltage drop is already 1.25V over the sense resistor. Benm suggested that I could use a constant voltage boost converter to provide a constant voltage of ~5V and then use a linear regulator with an enable pin. I also thought of using an X-Drive buck driver from Lazereer but I'm not sure if that would work.

X-Drive V6 input voltage range is 3.4 to 16.0 volts

SXB-2 all versions input voltage range is 2.8 to 6.0 volts

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