Wicked 75mW (not mine) with odd power output...

Hi, everyone
My friend has an old (out of warranty) WL "75mW" pointer that's currently putting out about 60mW peak, 40-50mW average, and I suspect the crystals have been knocked out of alignment. The beam has a large amount of speckle, and is significantly off-centre. Is this likely to be due to this? Also, would a repair be feasible on this, with my limited tools and resources, or is it better to leave it as a working 50mW pointer? Pics to follow soon...

Re: Wicked 75mW (not mine) with odd power output..

It sounds like a dirty lens, combined with an off-center beam. All my DPSS lasers have slightly off-center beams, and some are worse than others. I don't consider this a defect. Had the crystals been knocked out of alignment, you would have multi-mode operation (mode-hopping) as a symptom as well as power fluctuation..

You could try sending it to GooeyGus to see what he says, but other than cleaning the lens, I doubt that you will be able to repair it. I'm not really sure that it's broken..

Re: Wicked 75mW (not mine) with odd power output..

Just to mention, the brightness does "hop" as it starts, though this is probably just due to heat or similar, and he says that at one time it was quite significantly brighter than it is now, but one day it was suddenly as it is now. That's why I diagnosed it as potential misalignment. Also, the speckle is significant, and the spot is also quite heavily off-centre.  Pic on http://charlie.cheesebase.co.uk

The camera over-exposes the dot, and under-exposes the rest. The dot is still clearly visible above the speckle, and the wall is supposed to be a dark shade of cream.

Re: Wicked 75mW (not mine) with odd power output..

I used to have a 95mW Nexus from Wicked Lasers.  When I got it, the collumating lens wasn't centred over the beam.  
To fix it I measured the distance from the front of the laser to the lens nut for the correct focal length and marked on the lens nut where the lens should be(digital caliper). I then removed the lens nut and pried off the lens and  glued it to where i marked it, and put it back to where I measured it.  DO NOT USE CRAZY GLUE.   USE EPOXY.   Thats where I went wrong.  The IR filter is on the other side of the lens nut.  The super glue that I used permanently fogged up the IR filter and I had to remove it.  My laser was properly aligned and looked better but not having the IR filter made it far more unsafe.

The picture shown has the lens centred over the hole in the lens nut.  Thats okay if the laser light is coming out of the crystals on centre.  Mine was way off centre. My laser dot wasn't even a circle. It looked like a comet.

In retrospect I should have sent it back to Wicked and told them to shove it up their ass. But it costed $369US and took 2 weeks to get here from China. I just wanted to use the damn thing.

If you screw up the lens on its way out or you can't clean it, there is a similar lens in the PS3 disc reader assembly that you can replace it with. You can find one of those here on LPF easily enough.