50mw green trouble.

[joshshermannn1]

my 50mw green laser has diminished is brightness, so i was reading another thread about the same topic and Tech_Junkie told him to shine it at a piece of paper and see if there was a faint red glow, with my laser there is.
what does this mean?

 

[chipdouglas]

well if you have any green out put this probably wont work.... i'm no expert but i think tj's method was to detect if the crystals got unaligned. if you still have green, then the crystals could be unaligned, the batts could be dead, the pump diode could be going bad. it's not worth the head ache if you can afford it. you can get decent 50mw greenies from www.ledshoppe.com for around 20-25usd.


michael.

 

[JBTexas]

Not sure, but I think T-J meant that if there IS a faint red glow on paper, then that means that at least the pump diode is still putting out I.R.? (means that possibly the crystals have become unaligned).

WHEREAS; If you do NOT get at least a deep red glow, then possibly the entire module or the driver has gone out.

And obviously you want to check this against a TARGET (like white paper), to avoid hurting your eyes.

 

[joshshermannn1]

indeed.
im thinking of taking it apart and replacing the module, good idea or bad idea?

 

[Tech_Junkie]

In the other post his crystals were toast. I believe he overheated the crystals IIRC. I could be wrong.

But yes, if you have no green, and just a faint red glow then your crystals are either toast, or got misaligned. If you didnt get any green, or red, then your pump diode is usually dead. Either way its much easier to buy a new laser. You could play with it, but its highly unlikely you'll be able to fix a crystal misalignment.