488NM Laser Shooter Take Two, A Decade and A Year Later...

[Thorsteenster]

Firstly, let me apologize in advance if it looks like kiddy arts & crafts hour but I've been chugging away on the host and pretty much finished. Tomorrow I'll assemble the module.

Oh yeah, so this is a BB gun I've converted into a laser, an 18650 fits into the handle nicely where the CO2 cannister went, and the battery is a protected job w/leads. I was going to use a regular 18650 but was getting to caught up on how to make battery contacts when I found this one on liionwholesale. As for charging the battery, I'll make a dummy battery pig tailed to the mating connector installed that can be popped into a charger.

Along the backstrap is a switch that switches between charging & lasing, it has grips that slide back to change CO2, when closed it hits the micro switch. I probably didn't really need to install the backstrap switch, but figured what the heck, I have 30 of em.

I was trying to use the original safety switch with the gun but couldn't get it to slide properly and reliably so I used one of the switches I'd picked up in its place.

The heatsink is an M.2 SSD copper heatsink I picked up cheap and cut a piece to fit and used the thermal pad it came with for heat dissipation. Although at 400ma I don't think, hope anyway, there won't be much to dissipate.
I'm using a JST connector between diode & LD being the module will be attached in the "slide" so it makes field stripping a little easier.

The original trigger assembly has an arm that hits a micro switch to fire the laser.

Yep, a lot of hot glue in it but holding together well, it's got a little heft to it. Once I'm done I'll weight it, but has a nice feel to it and haven't even held it all together yet.

Any who, it's been fun, I haven't done any soldering in years, and planning out where and how to mount stuff was fun too.
I'm really pleased with how it's coming out, honestly way better that I could have done when I started.

Here's a few pics thus far:

 

[RedCowboy]

Have you finished it yet ?
Be careful that nobody thinks you're pointing a real gun with a laser sight.

 

[Thorsteenster]

No, need to solder the JST pigtail to the LD and install it into the module. It is a screw-in and I have some CPU thermal compound to go between. That was from the manufacturer I dug up on archive.org
May not get to it today, got to run up and do some IT stuff at my sister's office and my niece and nephew are over so they'll probably be bugging me to play Minecraft lol

But yeah, honestly I don't see this as a laser to play with around masses, not that any is but this one would be too likely to be mistaken by some libtard for some kind of fully automatic bang-bang shooter lol
Definitely a novelty build, but thanks to a post of yours in my component selection help thread I did take a safety precaution. You'll see that in the next post w/pics.

 

[Thorsteenster]

...and it's alive!!
So eagerly anticipating seeing this thing work, or not, I finished the module this morning. The screw-in was a little tricky being the ID of the LD retaining screw was too small to fit the heat shrink that came with the 22awg wires I'd bought so I stripped the pigtail back further, slid small pieces of tiny heat shrink I had over the actual joint then the larger over the bare wire.
The thermal paste I put an ever so small dab on and used a Q-Tip to spread it around the can. I practiced first on my old LD!
Works well so far, digging the color.
Still a few things to finish up, find new screws to hold the halves together, secure the charge port, and check laser's straightness & secure module in the slide. Figure I can use 405 on top of the slide and get them parallel and call it sited in.
Here's a pretty-darn-close-to-finished shot and a beam shot.

 

[Thorsteenster]

I'm really liking this laser, love the color and brightness. According to DTRs testing at 400ma it's putting out about 150mw.
Fantastic visibility outside at night, also is great for shooting stars.

 

[lowell389]

Ya made an impressive laser there.
The color looks awesome in your pictures, I can only imagine it’s quite better in person.
Beer to ya man!

 

[Thorsteenster]

Way better in person!
Thanks!

 

[Thorsteenster]

Here's the dummy battery I made for charging.
I had an old 7-Eleven Slurpee straw I'd bought years ago that's pretty much the same diameter as an 18650 so I cut a roughly 50mm piece.
Using a piece of brass strip I had I cleaned it up and bent it to shape, soldered wires on each and covered with some heat shrink left over from a 2AWG cable kit I'd bought for my vehicle. Little slices of smaller heat shrink keep the wires tidy and together.
Perhaps I should have had my heatgun on a lower setting, or not used needle nose pliers to hold it while heating the shrink wrap, the straw heated PDQ and the pliers distorted the shape a touch
Seems to work fine, it's charging but the charger only puts out 750ma. Could have gotten a faster charging unit but I like that this one also handles LiFe since I have a few A123 cells sitting around.
And yes, that's a paving stone, the bottom is nice & flat and serves well for doing my soldering on.