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FrozenGate by Avery

574nm 36 mW Yellow Laser

I guess I got very lucky with mine. It is stable at pump powers over 2 watts, but the driver is struggling as I have to have a fan running on it to keep the heat sinked components from overheating. Even the board is getting hot if I don't have the small DC fan running on it all the time. The laser head is staying quite cool, however. I am grateful I got this particular unit as it seems to stay right on 574nm no matter how hard I pump it. I have one additional driver board for it too.
 





Well, I got one!
My replacement yellow module showed up today. OPT made good on their promise to ship me one of the 3, they say, remaining 575 modules as a warranty replacement for one of my 565nm's that dropped to 4-6 mw.

I powered it up and it is def 575nm. More pure yellow, without the green tinge that the 565nm has! I have it on the same adjustable PS I have run the others on, and running at 9vdc, the output seems to level off at 11-12mw. Any higher voltage and there is no increase in output power.The 565nm acts the same, levels at about 22mw at 9vdc.

On this one, the driver board looks identical, but seems to run a little cooler. The 575 driver got to about 175 F after 5-6 min. The 565 driver gets to about 195 F in the same amount of time.

Maybe they are underdriving it to make it last, I did not measure the current yet. I mean there is a 20 degree diff in temp, but also only half the output power at the same input voltage.

I kept my original order for 2 of the 575's open with them, they offerd me a refund though because of the long wait. They said they would notify me when the new ones are available.

As of now, I'm just glad to have got one. Hope it works out for my other ones as well as all of you others that are waiting.

A couple of pics. 22mw is 565, 12mw is 575. They look identical in the pics. Again though, they are both yellow in person, with the 575 being more yellow, no green at all.

Added a couple of pics, quick edited in PS to show close to what the actual colors are.
 

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I am happy for you. Thanks for the detail. I hope, as well, that it means good news for the rest of us. Paid in May. Last update July 22nd. Haven't gotten a reply in a couple of weeks. Not very happy for me. ):
 
That's great for you Grn05gt.

The last I head from Freeman was Sep. 7th All he said was:
Not yet, nothing available still Matt.
Click to expand...

I am just hoping we can get some good quality lasers before the 180 days for the paypal buyers protection "expires".
Otherwise I'll have to ask for a refund and then pay them again.
 
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I received a reply yesterday. Not so great:

Hi Lewie,

I'm sorry. It's not yet ready and I personally has been thinking about it is a failure development for the time being. Also my patience has run out already.
If you would like, we just make the refund.​

Super disappointed.

EDIT:
Gonna put it in the BST - but if anyone here feels my pain and has a 'spare' - I'm in the market :thanks:
 
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@Grn05gt

Visit the OP and see how I heat sinked the two ICs on the 575nm driver board. You can add a small fan to move air across the heat sinks to enable you to increase the pump current and get more power out of these units. I personally don't understand why they haven't done this themselves as it works quite well.
 
It might not be that wisest to increase the pump power at this point. Right now we don't know too much about how resilient these crystals are.
Especially if those are from a new batch, then there would be no way of knowing if they can handle any increase in pump power without degrading without actually testing one to that point. From what I understand, these crystals are already being over pumped as is.

IMO having a none-degrading stable lower power laser might be better in the long run than having higher power now at the cost of future degradation.
Of course, that is a personal choice.
 
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At any rate, I would still heat sink the two ICs on the driver. Even if they are being driven as hard as possible, they shouldn't get that hot. The small DC fan is also a good idea.
 
paul1598419 said:
At any rate, I would still heat sink the two ICs on the driver. Even if they are being driven as hard as possible, they shouldn't get that hot. The small DC fan is also a good idea.
Click to expand...

Yes, been following this from the begining. I actually have a package of those micro/mini heatsinks and thermal epoxy for them. Just have'nt got around to doing it yet

When I run them, I only push them to just over 9vdc. There seems to be no diff in brightness going all the way to 12vdc. My LPM confirms this. I want ot start running one of these for longer times in my lumia, so I will be affixing the sinks this weekend. And I have a few 30 and 40mm 5-9vdc fans I will add to the mix.

On a side note, when running at 9v, the module fan is slower, but the module barely gets warm at all
 
One reason to supply the driver board with +12 volts is the fan is driven off this board. I have found that its speed decreases when it is supplied lower voltages. When placing the heat sink on the IC, make sure you secure it away from the large electrolytic capacitor right next to it. It tends to run hot from the components around it and that is not good for its longevity.

I misspoke when I said "the two ICs". One is the output transistor and the other is an IC.
 
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CurtisOliver said:
Not perfect as done quick, but here is a few of your images in yellow for you Paul.
paul%20574%20%281%29.jpg


paul%20574%20%282%29.jpg


paul%20574%20%283%29.jpg


Nice laser you have there. :)
Click to expand...


Just wanted to put this out there as some have asked for beam shots of the 575nm lasers. They all photograph as green, but these were photo-shopped to correct for that. This is of my 574nm laser at 36 mW. I have since done some more tinkering and the output is closer to 50 mW now.
 
paul1598419 said:
Just wanted to put this out there as some have asked for beam shots of the 575nm lasers. They all photograph as green, but these were photo-shopped to correct for that. This is of my 574nm laser at 36 mW. I have since done some more tinkering and the output is closer to 50 mW now.
Click to expand...

Nice!
What kind of modifications? The good ol' classic pot mod?
Can you see what package the diode is mounted in?
If it's TO-18 or TO-9, I may try to get one of these if they ever show up again.
 
It is a C mount. My modifications are adding heat sinks to the output transistor and driver IC and adding a fan to actively cool these heat sinked devices that put out a greater amount of heat when the pump current is increased. It was all covered in this thread and has worked quite well to double the output power while keeping the heat marginal.
 
paul1598419 said:
It is a C mount. My modifications are adding heat sinks to the output transistor and driver IC and adding a fan to actively cool these heat sinked devices that put out a greater amount of heat when the pump current is increased. It was all covered in this thread and has worked quite well to double the output power while keeping the heat marginal.
Click to expand...

Cool. I guess I’ll have to look through. I stopped keeping up with it after the source dried up.

Hm... c-mount... not the most convenient package.
 
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