capacitor

when iam putting a capacitor on my ld do i just solder the negative of the cap to the negative of the ld and the positive of the cap to the positive of the ld?

is it polarised?if so, yes just do that. if it's any other kind, polarity doesn't matter. make sure it's soldered good!

ok thank you also is it ok to use lead wires our just directly to diode

Wait won't that cause a short circuit if you put the cap with both wires on the diodes legs?

Justin -- I solder the cap leads as close to the diode body as possible. Sort of stopping the crap at the door. Do the soldering quickly when that close to the body of the LD. Nice that these GB diodes have long leads to work with.
Most electrolytic caps are polarized and yes --- +to+, -to-.

Mike

PS: your shift key isn't working.

Hemlock Mike said:

PS: your shift key isn't working.

Click to expand...

Lol Mike, that really annoys you, doesn't it?


Corim: The capacitor will not cause a short. By bridging the diode pins, you are wiring it in parallel to the LD (or piggyback).

Think of it as a voltage spike filter. When you power up your circuit, the cap will charge itself to your circuit voltage and will become passive (doing nothing). You need to choose a cap that will charge way above your circuit (16v is good), if you get any voltage spike, the cap will absorb this by trying to charge itself to the voltage spike before it reaches the LD. Once it has absorbed the spike, it will gradually give that excess voltage up until it reaches the correct circuit voltage again and becomes passive once again, thereby saving your LD from the spike.

Jase

Jase --

Real good explanation of the capacitor in the circuit.

Mike

See picture here...

http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1186966870/5#5

GL;
DDL