I would suggest grabbing this driver, unsoldering the two resistors on the back and soldering in a nice 4.7 ohm 2512 2W resistor in one of the positions (leaving the other one just empty).
Interesting. Almost forgot that the mW rating on datasheet is without lens... I think the Qumefox acrylic is the best you can get for 635, I'm pretty sure 650-G-1 is not coated for red that short. How bright it is? Does the color differ much from regular red? Photos? *cough* Beamshots?
Done, build complete. Photos later. Celebration now
Basic details:
- HL63133DG (63133 henceforth)
- 1085 DIY Driver
- Red Guidesman host with momentary cliky mod
- 340 mA Current Output
- LPM of 179mW Optical Output using RED coated acrylic lens (from Qumefox)
Objective assessment:
- Compared to 275mW LOC builds, this 63133 is clearly brighter.
- In fact, it's not a difference that you have to struggle to see. I don't know that I could say "x times brighter" because that's a difficult thing to measure. But I'll just say that it is CLEARLY more visibly bright. You could mix the two lasers up a hundred times, and a layman off the street would always identify the 63133 as noticeably brighter than the brightest LOC (815, 822 or 826) build I've seen.
- However, it does NOT push red pointers into the realm of being highly "visible" beams like 445, 532. In scenarios where you can see the beam of a 532/445, you still may not see the 63133 unless you're on-axis.
- The color is not substantially different than a LOC. You can tell them apart, but this is NOT orange. This is absolutely RED.
- I'm pretty sure this thing could be pushed a bit further. It wouldn't surprise me if this diode could handle closer to 400mA, and truly top 200mW output.
Well - we have the datasheet divergence measurements, so I didn't tackle measuring that manually. Having said that, I'm not against doing so next week (I'm moving Tuesday, and this was really a rushed job just to get this put together - I'll probably rebuild it in a different host later).
Although really, the beam behaves exactly like a LOC. There's really no perceivable difference. It's single mode - so it should be fairly good. It's at least on par with LOCs.
As to heat, there really isn't any noticeable heat. This was a momentary clicky build though, so it's not like I've left it running for 5 minutes. Having said that, I just kept it running for 2 minutes, and my hand couldn't feel any heat through the host. When I was initially testing in just the aixiz module, I felt warmth when experimenting with it at 350mA. However, it definitely wouldn't be what I would call "heat". Warmth really is the bext explanation, and that's after having been LPMing it first at 250, then 320, then 350 - so it had been running for ~5 minutes off and (mostly) on.
That doesn't necessarily mean we can push them higher, but it wouldn't shock me if we could.
Having climbed my Everest, I'm addicted, and craving a new diode wavelength. Until we see some greens showing up, I'm left wondering where to go next.
There are some multi-mode 250 to 400mW 9mm red/oranges in 630nm, that are designed for 15 degrees C. I could pull that off in Canada for a momentary clicky.