Reuse of old drivers and optics

OK, I have my DVD diode out and ready to go. Also have lots of red and green LD driver boards and optics from old pointers laying around doing nothing.

Want I'd like to know is can any of these drivers and/or optics be used with the DVD diode? For now I just want to make a down and dirty pointer without having to send away for any extra parts.

Sorry, but those driver boards don't put out enough power to power up a DVD burner laser diode.

Theres only one way to really find out... Apply different voltages to the drivers and see what the output voltage and current is. Depending on how many you have, there may be a decent chance that you have one that will work or will work with a small modification or two.

Thanks for the information! Can you tell me what Mw and voltages ranges to look for? A glance around the Web shows differing power requirements for DVD diodes making things a bit confusing.

I also see that many people use the Dorcy Jr.as a host. Question: can any LED flashlight be used who's driver fits the right specs? I have around a dozen flashlights, ranging form one cell to six cell, and it would be great if one of them fit the bill

afaik people don't use the driver from flashlights at all... they just like to have their lasers in a convenient metal tube.
if you see someone on the forums and it looks like they're using the original driver board from the flashlight, it's probably that they're only using the pushbutton and bypassing the rest of the driver.

as for voltage/current, red lasers take about 3v, though it's the current you have to be concerned about.. depending on what drive you got your laser from, it can take a variety of different currents. Some of the best diodes that have been found can take as much as 450mA, though some slower burners diodes will die at 100mA.

what drive did you pull it from? what was the speed of the drive?