I bought one of the 1.5W Police Host lasers that BLord had up a while back. Sometime in December I was having some issues getting it to function properly (flickering, brownouts, etc), eventually when I tried to turn it on I got a puff of smoke... 
At the time I set it aside, intending on asking someone here for advice, and promptly forgot about it :yabbem:
Well, I ran across it yesterday and decided to open it up and look through it. The first thing I found was that the wires connecting the driver and diode had twisted to the point of breakage (pretty certain that's my fault), but otherwise it looked fine at first. So I reconnected and shrink-wrapped the wires and lo and behold.... nothing.
Then I thought to open the switch/charger circuit sandwiched between the batteries and driver, and it was most definitely FRIED. The boards and connections were fine, but the wiring inside it was burnt through in three or four spots. :wtf:
I plan on taking it over to a friends and soldering on some new wires today, but I thought I'd get some feedback first to make sure I don't fry something expensive.
On a related note, the surviving bits of wire inside were probably the smallest gauge I've lain eyes on.
tl;dr
Shiny laser make smoke signals, I find broken driver wires and well done circuit for side-clicky. I think can fix but want ask questions.
So far my thoughts are that:
(a). I twisted the driver leads to the point that they became exposed and shorted the circuit, resulting in the tiny wires in the switch overheating.
(b). The wires in the clicky circuit were too small to begin with and were slowly degrading the entire time until they shorted and went *poof*. The twisted wires could have happened when I was playing around trying to figure out wtf happened.
(c). I wasn't careful enough with the run time and the wires burnt out because they happened to be the weakest link and I should be grateful it wasn't something expensive.
or (d). Something is horribly wrong and when I put it back together it's going to make more interesting smells from shinier parts.:lasergun:
Any thoughts from the experts out there? Or just someone who sorta knows their stuff? I'm just trying to avoid burning it out again. Should I be fine with just adding some wire that's a bit thicker?
PS: Blord, if you read this, I LOVE this laser and I am in NO way complaining about your work.
At the time I set it aside, intending on asking someone here for advice, and promptly forgot about it :yabbem:
Well, I ran across it yesterday and decided to open it up and look through it. The first thing I found was that the wires connecting the driver and diode had twisted to the point of breakage (pretty certain that's my fault), but otherwise it looked fine at first. So I reconnected and shrink-wrapped the wires and lo and behold.... nothing.
Then I thought to open the switch/charger circuit sandwiched between the batteries and driver, and it was most definitely FRIED. The boards and connections were fine, but the wiring inside it was burnt through in three or four spots. :wtf:
I plan on taking it over to a friends and soldering on some new wires today, but I thought I'd get some feedback first to make sure I don't fry something expensive.
On a related note, the surviving bits of wire inside were probably the smallest gauge I've lain eyes on.
tl;dr
Shiny laser make smoke signals, I find broken driver wires and well done circuit for side-clicky. I think can fix but want ask questions.
So far my thoughts are that:
(a). I twisted the driver leads to the point that they became exposed and shorted the circuit, resulting in the tiny wires in the switch overheating.
(b). The wires in the clicky circuit were too small to begin with and were slowly degrading the entire time until they shorted and went *poof*. The twisted wires could have happened when I was playing around trying to figure out wtf happened.
(c). I wasn't careful enough with the run time and the wires burnt out because they happened to be the weakest link and I should be grateful it wasn't something expensive.
or (d). Something is horribly wrong and when I put it back together it's going to make more interesting smells from shinier parts.:lasergun:
Any thoughts from the experts out there? Or just someone who sorta knows their stuff? I'm just trying to avoid burning it out again. Should I be fine with just adding some wire that's a bit thicker?
PS: Blord, if you read this, I LOVE this laser and I am in NO way complaining about your work.
