Ok, just made my first burn through 5mm ABS with my new laser.
I bought an 16x Lite-on BD drive more than a year ago with the idea of building a high-power 405nm laser, but never managed to get around to it. Finally harvested the laser-diode yesterday, and today I disassembled the optics of one of my standard lasers, and placed the diode, with a 5uF cap soldered directly on the legs in it, put it in a vice, and ran it from a LM317-based variable current driver. Took it up to 500mA, and it burned through 5mm thick ABS plastic in a couple of seconds.... Thinking about mounting the whole thing in a box now, with a small fan for cooling.
No idea what optical power output I am getting, but looking at the graphs in this thread, I guess it is >700mW.
Next project is a bright blue laser, and then a yellow one, but I think first I'll get myself a power-meter. The LaserBee looks like a nice power meter. I am also thinking about building a meter for measuring the spectral output from my different lasers.