One tough diode

[wolfhunter9154]

Today, I finally finished my red build. After killing 2 LPC's I remembered that I had an old DVD burner. I dissected it and got to the sled. extracting it... That was a different story. While trying to get it out of the heatsink, the can was partially crushed (the aperture hole is now an oval) and dropped multiple times. When I thought it was dead, I sent 500 ma into it with barely any heatsink (About half on the "stock" one) and it was still alive! Then when I got it pressed and I was trying to get it into my groove, I sheared bot the positive AND negative pins off of it. It is a case negative so the negative lead is soldered on to part of the heatsink and the positive lead is sitting on the remnants of the positive pin (Which I think is now below the surface of the diode) and held on by a 3/4 to 1 inch tall mound of hot glue. I twisted the top on, and to my surprise it worked! It only outputs 10-15 mw at ~200 mA but that is probably a side effect of the above I would take pictures but I forgot and I really dont want to risk unscrewing the top.:yh: Why cant all diodes survive like this?

 

[danefex]

Congrats on extracting & using that 'less than promising' sounding diode.... Even if it's only 10-15mw still you made it into a laser