Thor Labs

Thor labs offers a BIG free catalog of their products. There's nothing I wanna buy tho. LOL. It's just fun wasting time looking at all there stuff.

http://www.thorlabs.com/CatReq.cfm

WTF! They want $1,855.80 for a single 5mW 405nm diode.

Dr. Evil said:

WTF! They want $1,855.80 for a single 5mW 405nm diode.

Click to expand...

But you get longer diode pins and a spec sheet ;D

About a month ago, I looked into the possibility of obtaining an engineering sample of a 5mW 405nm diode from Nichia in Japan. Nichia invented 405nm diode technology, for those who don't know. They wanted over $2000 for one 5mW diode with identical specs to any blu-ray sled diode. I'm not sure why certain manufacturers and suppliers are charging so much for them, when they can be had for less than $50 on the street. All I know is that I'll be getting them from ebay suppliers before I"ll crack open my wallet to the tune of 2 grand.

selling a single part or selling them by the thousands is a big difference (think of the labor involved)

The same counts for the drive manufacturers. making sleds and drives is cheaper than making sleds and drives and selling one laser diode separately every month

I purchased these two items from them and they were shipped quickly.
http://www.thorlabs.com/thorProduct.cfm?partNumber=S7060R
http://www.thorlabs.com/thorProduct.cfm?partNumber=SR9A

I use these two parts and connected them to a Diode test bed with an adjustable driver. The driver adjusts from 1 to 1000mA's. Once I receive a diode, I can quickly test it to whatever power setting I want. I have also used it to test units to determine if the problem is with a diode or its' driver through a process of elimination. The cable is handy because it has ESD protection. The socket allows me to just pop the diode onto the test bed without any soldering, etc.