laser help

So here is my set up..... a ggw in a 3- 10440 host. with rckstr driver.

here is my problem... last nite it was fine. freshly charged batteries good burning power.

today around lunch I turned it on and it barely lases. I have never actually seen a laser go "led" do they lase and make a dot at over 20 feet?

I am pretty sure it is not batteries. i have 2 new ones I got from Dave. and my old ones were in it at time of incident. so i took one out and jumpered the spot so to make a 2- 10440 set up. still same prob.

I got home and charged all batts, still same problem. This laser has not been dropped. but it was sitting in my front seat all day on black leather.

edit.. I am now 99 percent sure it is not the batts. They worked great in a core blu-ray that I bought of off Glenn. So I think this might be my first LED'ed laser =(

any suggestions?

I have an LED'ed LOC that still produces a coherent output. It makes a dot from very far away... a very dim dot at that.

What was your current setting? No cold solder joints you can see?

I've not heard of a laser overheating while it wasn't on... but I suppose it's a possibility.

It sounds like a dead diode to me.

I'm impressed though. It took you awhile to finally kill one!

I have never seen a GGW that will produce a spot at 20' if it is LED'ed.
LOC's and LCC's will. I'm not saying this is not the case, but I've never seen it.

Jumper over the switch and see if this works. I have seen a lot of bad switches produce this symptom.

I have had some experience with the 3XAAA set-up with a rckstr driver. Are you using Li Ion batteries?

Thats what I was using. Fully charged they were putting out over 12V. I know they should go down under load but... When I was setting my rckstr driver with my dummy load after about 20-30 seconds the driver would get so hot I couldn't touch it and the mV reading on my DMM would just drop fast until it was only in double digits even thought I was setting it to over 400mA.

I figured I killed the driver so I ordered another one and haven't checked the old one yet. It could be a bad driver...

i was origionally using 2- 10440's in my 3aaa cartridge with the empty space jumped. after i saw it led'd i put in the 3rd.

on a side note just for fun i put in a 3.7v 18650 and it just barely comes on no beam or dot. but weak light... now the fun part. i put on my safety glasses and put the laser with the lens as close to my eye as i could focus my eye and see clearly.... looking inside with THE SAFTEY GLASSES and with only 3.7 volts TOTAL. looking inside the laser was one of the nicest things i have ever seen. you can see the wires, where the laser starts up at. it's really a sight to see.

back to business.... i have a new tail cap with clicky, i will try that. also i have a spare driver, i will try that as well. thanks for the input guys.

michael

I forgot to ask, what was the mA you had your driver set at?

this happend to me too, with an PHR. I wasn't using it for about 2 weeks, then I pwred it up for few minutes (it lased), then turned it off and after the next turn on it was a LED
I was using ddl driver at 110mA