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Waiting for the glue to dry. YaaaAAwn. Later this evening will finish soldering things up. The switch is from the controller of an IR UFO hoverball. Toy was great fun, Christmas gift, however it was a miracle of planned obsolescence and quickly wore out :( I'm worried the diode is not centered...

Here's a very difficult part of the build. Cutting out parts of the thick plastic project box. In the past I would slowly cut through the plastic using an Xacto knife. This required half a dozen blades and hours of time slowly deepening the cuts. Often the tip of the knife would break off. This...

I need more machining tools! I got the flat pack crudely mounted in the optics housing. It not quite centered nor flat, however will have to do for now. Arctic alumina'd into place. I did sand down the edges of the heat sponge.. ug lead dust. Here are some pictures. Work continues on the...

Here I've completed soldering up the protection circuit. I'm certainly not very adept at soldering - it's something I only do a few times a year. Although if you've never soldered before you will have to practice before attempting this - I determined (above video) the amount of resistance to...

In the video below I demonstrate how to determine how much resistance is needed in the LM317 (DDL) circuit for the diode to consume a given amount of current - This is useful for evaluating any laser diode before continuing a build. This is the red laser diode from the LG BE12. After testing...

I'm not certain about the diode. I purchased two of these diodes from a 'SenKat' here in 2007. There were advertised as Sony 16x DVD diode. I imagine any DVD or single mode diode will do. The penny was used to raise the switch. I had cut the plastic project box inaccurately. The Q-tip straws...

I'm able to get perfect transmission holograms using a DIY red laser. It's a Sony 16x DVD diode, 'underclocked', consuming 125mA. The output is ~75mW. No Duty cycle - I leave the laser on for 2 or more hours and start exposing holograms after a 10-15 minute warm up. This gives me a ~1 second...

I'm about to start, attempt, to create a pointer using the red diode from a LG burner. This weekend I dismantled my LG drive and removed all three diodes (BluRay, DVD, CD). I completed a DIY build with the BluRay diode - see this topic for more...

I forgot how much fun 405nm is in a dark room -awesome! When I project the spot onto the ceiling everything in the room has that blacklight glow. Many objects, especially white ones, fluorescing brightly. There's a faint haze of scattered high frequency radiation. The beam is faintly visible...

Short video of pointer in action, complete with violet flash rolling shutter. Camera's sensor survived fortunately :) -SI2cIv7R2k

I estimate the 75mA current draw not requiring a heatsink for pointer use. Besides, the JB weld has some iron in it, it may sponge up some heat.

Got it functional. I had to sand down the flange of the Meredith housing and cut the lens assembly tension spring in half to get the lens close enough to the diode to focus. If I'd had the Meredith 5mm to 9mm adapter thingie I might have been able to avoid this. Here it is - 9 volt battery...

The part I hate - waiting for the glue to dry. This old JB weld is curing very slowly. Maybe in a few hours I'll solder things up and test. Depends on the glue.. The switch is from the back of the LG unit. I can only dream of a real machine shop.

I extracted the diode from it's lead (?) heatsink. A rather difficult chore involving a pliers (one hand) and hacksaw (other hand). After notching both sides of the heat dissipater a few twists using a flat head screwdriver breaks the block. A small piece of tape over the diode aperture prevents...

Here's a picture of the completed 'DDL' circuit - I decided to run the diode at 75mA. This is a relatively eye safe power, and hopefully a long lived diode. Tomorrow I've got to hacksaw the diode out of the housing and install it into a premium Meredith lens assembly. Then package things up...

Here's an honest first light video. I'm using a current regulated ('DDL') circuit utilizing the LM317T voltage regulator. I got the schematic for the circuit here, around 2007. Easy to locate parts - 1 capacitor, couple resistors, and diode. LD came to life consuming 50ma. I got lucky with the...

The 'HF' side is positive. Got lucky. Gonna house the diode in a Meredith assembly, using the LM317T based regulator, nine volt battery.

My LG drive started burning coasters. So I dismantled it and extracted the diodes this evening. Time to build another violet laser pointer. Here's the drive's box - Diodes, left to right, I think, are: BluRay, Red (dvd), IR (cd) Here's the 405nm ('BluRay') one, closeup, back - You can...

~100mW DVD laser. pocket mini kit from jayrob.

_C7kQFh170k Eric