My guinea pig diode was decanned when a speck of dust landed on the window and caused the diode to start melting it.
After decanning the diode I tested went to 1150mw at 1.2A, and began mode shifting, but no sign of COD yet, i think there is not much need to go beyond this; you should be able to run safely at around 750-800mw for maximal lifetime to power ratio. The extra good news, these diodes are built very similar to a PHR diode, they seem to have a very high reverse withstand voltage to boot, zero leakage to 14V reverse biased. This means that accidentally hooking them up backwards will not likely damage them.
As expected thermal management is a serious concern, the brass axiz modules are not enough heat sinking, they will need some sort of decent heat-sink, preferably cooled by a small fan. As neat as these are, they are not ideal for pointer like devices for this reason as well as simple safety issues. Tomorrow i'll make a cooling unit based on a laptop cooling heat pipe assy and test it at different temperatures.
The missile lens is a lens that I used to sell on ebay, I still have some available, i am selling them on amazon and ebid. One big warning is they will mostly be suitable for lab and serious beam show lasers, they are quite large by axiz standards an inch by 1/4 inch in and 1/2 inch out, but are a must if you prefer long range collimation over narrow beam diameter. Note, I cannot take paypal, they banned me permanently because of a "credit check"