help with 445?

Alright, so I ordered a 445 1.4w laser and it seemed really nice. However something seemed off, I couldn't get the beam down to a small point, it always had some funky stuff around it. I took the lens out and when I pointed it at a wall I could see something was not right. Instead of all of the lines from being horizontal and nice it looked all jumbled up, going vertical where it should be going horizontal. I looked into the diode and there was a spot in the middle.

Just a shot in the dark, no pun intended, but it looks like your diode fried. When multimode diodes degrade you will start seeing the bars across spot. It looks like only one bar is lasing properly, and the others are degraded.

Alright, I just bought this from a LPF member and am discussing it with him now.

Is the window clean as well?

When you say "looked into the diode and there was a spot in the middle" does that mean that there is something on the small glass front of the diode?

Remove any batteries before examining the diode window.

Peace,
dave

I had one go zombie like that. Pretty much at most a low power laser with high current consumption and at least a really expensive LED. I cranked up the current on the flexmod till she died when it happened to me :eg:

Dave, I believe you're right but I'm not %100. I am shipping it back to the seller and he's going to take a look at it. I would get down and dirty with it, but I'm not sure how it was put together and would not want to brick a laser.