I thought, somewhat, the module made up for the lack of a heatsink? The last laser I built didn't have one, I don't think, and I could leave it on for a few minutes at a time... but this'll be more powerful, won't it? What specific part would be suggested, then? Also, for the static, I assume...
I was kind of planning on just mounting everything to a piece of wood, letting me look at or edit the components easily, see if anything broke, etc. So, if I wanted to, I could purchase all the stated items, get the tools, and build a 300-400 mw red burning laser, right?
Diode, check. Driver, check. Module, check. Wiring, I have some laying around which I've used for other things, works great even with pretty high voltage, check. Batteries, check. Heatsink and host, I thought were decided to be unnecessary? Correct me if I'm wrong, please. What do I do about the...
Anything else is more money out of pocket, which isn't going to the laser itself, and I could just use a vice in school, so why spend? Just so I've got this down pat, with a soldering iron, the stated diode, the stated driver, and the 5.6 Aixiz module, I can get this to work with 3 AA batteries...
660nm 300 400mW CW Red Laser Diode ML101U29 25 1pcs Pak | eBay
Would that work well as the diode? If so, what would I need to attach to it in order to make it work?
I think, for my first few builds, that doing anything that complex or dangerous would be inadvisable... is there a particular diode or module that it's suggested I try starting with?
I think I have a printer that is basically trash, and I think my mom's old desktop's disk drive is capable of writing, I think... would either of those work?
Just a small driver and diode... or, what would you suggest? I want to keep everything pretty cheap, but I'd also like to get quite some power out of it. What should I do?
Without purchasing anything too fancy, how would I go about cooling it? I'm not planning on running it for hours on end, but for maybe up to a minute or two at a time?
Would it be practical and safe to take an altoids tin, punch holes in it for the wires and stuff, and mount everything into it? It's what I did last time, and Styropyro did it, but is it actually okay to do? After I get it working, I might take a crack at attaching it to something, but not...