Care and feeding of your Arctic beast

[benmartz]

Be extremely careful if you attempt to unscrew the large black ring on the G2 model. I unscrewed mine tonight and didn't notice until too late that the entire assembly came out in one piece, twisting the diode leads and breaking the wires off. If you attempt to unscrew the large ring, use a depth gauge or even just a piece of wire to check whether or not the entire assembly is rising before you get past 1/2 turn or so. Otherwise you may be cursing your curiosity as I am right now.

 

[ZapU]

Be extremely careful if you attempt to unscrew the large black ring on the G2 model. I unscrewed mine tonight and didn't notice until too late that the entire assembly came out in one piece, twisting the diode leads and breaking the wires off. If you attempt to unscrew the large ring, use a depth gauge or even just a piece of wire to check whether or not the entire assembly is rising before you get past 1/2 turn or so. Otherwise you may be cursing your curiosity as I am right now.

This was covered in the OP: :banghead:

WARNING! Make sure when you unscrew this that the main diode housing doesn't turn with it. You may need to use a needle nose pliers to hold the diode housing (just reach into the thermal grease if you have too) while you unscrew the "top hat". This piece can be put away with the lens caps also, you don't need it.

G2 Arctics have just came out. One has failed because the black wire to the diode module was short and came off, possibly when the module was unscrewed. Pictures of G1 modules unscrewed showed longer wires.



I do not recommend that you unscrew the module unless you are willing to void your warranty.

 

[Coherent Light]

Be extremely careful if you attempt to unscrew the large black ring on the G2 model. I unscrewed mine tonight and didn't notice until too late that the entire assembly came out in one piece, twisting the diode leads and breaking the wires off. If you attempt to unscrew the large ring, use a depth gauge or even just a piece of wire to check whether or not the entire assembly is rising before you get past 1/2 turn or so. Otherwise you may be cursing your curiosity as I am right now.

Did the leads on the diode itself get pulled off or did the wires break and the diode leads are intact? If the leads on the diode are broken off You will have to replace Your diode. You Arctic can be repaired either way.

 

[ppctx]

nice post but you should have given credit to the ALL the photographers of photos you used, or just take the pictures yourself.

 

[ZapU]

nice post but you should have given credit to the ALL the photographers of photos you used, or just take the pictures yourself.

You are correct, of course. I added attributes to the other pictures.
Since yours was removed from photobucket, I put in my own.

 

[benmartz]

Did the leads on the diode itself get pulled off or did the wires break and the diode leads are intact? If the leads on the diode are broken off You will have to replace Your diode. You Arctic can be repaired either way.

Fortunately the diode can leads are still attached (for now). I'm sure that I fatigued them further when I very slowly and carefully untwisted them. I need to solder the driver leads back on to them which I'm not looking forward to - I've never been good at soldering end-to-end in tight spaces. I'm thinking that I will then need to embed the entire back of the assembly in maybe RTV or something for strain relief so that everything doesn't break again when I screw the assembly back in. Many good lessons to be learned here

 

[Coherent Light]

Painful Lessons at that. You could try Hot Glue as a last resort to encase the leads and wires. Semi rigid silicone might also be a good choice. There are epoxies that are made for this kind of job, but I don't know if You want to use something that permanent and You would have to find it.

 

[benmartz]

This was covered in the OP: :banghead:

You're dead on of course and I didn't pay enough attention even after the warning. The lesson is to pay very careful attention to exactly what's turning when you turn your pliers.

 

[benmartz]

Painful Lessons at that. You could try Hot Glue as a last resort to encase the leads and wires. Semi rigid silicone might also be a good choice. There are epoxies that are made for this kind of job, but I don't know if You want to use something that permanent and You would have to find it.

I really like your hot glue idea, thanks. That's probably the best bet for a quick and semi-rigid encapsulation of the leads and solder joint.

 

[Coherent Light]

put some heat shrink on the wires when You solder it back together. Then You can encase the wires in the glue

 

[ZapU]

You're dead on of course and I didn't pay enough attention even after the warning. The lesson is to pay very careful attention to exactly what's turning when you turn your pliers.

I'm sorry it died, hope you can fix it.

There was a thread by mikeeey where he had the wires come off his G2. His had a very short black wire. Were the wires to the diode shorter than the picture of the wires in the G1?

 

[benmartz]

Thank you for everyone's suggestions and such. I still don't have the issue resolved since I don't have any glue or epoxy on hand that will bond to the black metal around the diode. The diode and host still work perfectly so once I have the strain/rotational issue resolved then hopefully I'll be back to square one.

I did take the opportunity to properly remove the black lens hat and I am completely shocked at what I found: the lens tube is glued into place at an absurd angle. :wtf:

Unfortunately the compound that WL used is rock hard so I doubt that I'll be able to fix it. :gun:

I'm not sure how to post images directly here yet so instead I posted some photos from tonight's work (including photos of the lens issue) on my MobileMe gallery for anyone who's interested.

EDIT: Changed gallery link to a style that will actually show my captions.

 

[ZapU]

Thank you for everyone's suggestions and such. I still don't have the issue resolved since I don't have any glue or epoxy on hand that will bond to the black metal around the diode. The diode and host still work perfectly so once I have the strain/rotational issue resolved then hopefully I'll be back to square one.

I did take the opportunity to properly remove the black lens hat and I am completely shocked at what I found: the lens tube is glued into place at an absurd angle. :wtf:

Unfortunately the compound that WL used is rock hard so I doubt that I'll be able to fix it. :gun:

I'm not sure how to post images directly here yet so instead I posted some photos from tonight's work (including photos of the lens issue) on my MobileMe gallery for anyone who's interested.

EDIT: Changed gallery link to a style that will actually show my captions.

Linked it for you

The module is different than the G1. The lens housing is shorter. The lens assembly is recessed on the G1(see pic below).

Also it looks like your lens assembly is cross threaded! That could be a pain to correct. You would first have to remove the crooked assembly without damaging it, then you will have issues with the threads being damaged.

Even though you have taken it apart, I would send that picture to WL and see how they respond. (rots of ruck) That is clearly an assembly FU.


Image by LazyBeam

 

[Coherent Light]

Damn that looks freakin nasty wth is WL doing now. Total sh*t

 

[benmartz]

Linked it for you
...
Also it looks like your lens assembly is cross threaded! That could be a pain to correct. You would first have to remove the crooked assembly without damaging it, then you will have issues with the threads being damaged.

Even though you have taken it apart, I would send that picture to WL and see how they respond. (rots of ruck) That is clearly an assembly FU.

Thanks for linking the photo, ZapU - I now understand how to do it next time.

I forgot to mention that my educated guess at the reason that the lens hat was stuck in the first place is because someone at WL must have actually grabbed the outer threads with pliers while assembling the lens. This is based on the observation that 2-3 hat threads were smashed in two locations on opposing sides.

I opened a support ticket with WL last night asking them to look at the photos and respond to me. I sure wouldn't object if they came back and offered a replacement despite the voided warranty.

 

[jbtm]

Nice information. I already have a DIY thats much stronger than the arctic that's focusable. So I'm fine with keeping my arctic a single-set laser. at 20ft the beam is about 1cm wide, and can burn through 3mm of plastic in about 2-3 minutes. Very satisfied.

I see this information useful for those who wish to burn things near by, But that's why my >1W DIY is for!