Hey IgorT, if I donate the price of a PHR, how much for shipping to canada ?
Btw, no offense, but I think this is kind of a waste of money.
$11 USD per person is a waste? I don't think that's too much and you get a fully PIV plotted PHR diode for it, which is a normal price...
Normally you'd only get a sled for this money. But PHRs are cheap, and for $16 i can select a high wavelength freak, again with a full printed PIV plot of your diode included in the package!
I can ship to Canada for $3 with Priority Airmail... You don't even have to pay me for shipping, just donate the shipping money, and you get a diode!
If it makes ANY difference on your decision i can ship with regular mail for free!
The diodes are my donation to this cause, if anyone wants to take them, but
they will have to request them in an email or PM...
I can also provide Open Can reds or Long-Closed can reds!
Open can reds would require an $11 contribution like PHRs, Long-Closed cans can be had with ANY contribution even just $6! If the contribution at least covers a PHR diode (or a few $ more), you can also request a Long-Closed can red for free!
Again, i will invest my time into plotting them, recommending a current setting, and i could even add drivers if they are paid for (driver payments would have to go to me tho), pre-set to a specific current, even soldered to a diode inserted in an AixiZ module!
Standard pricing would apply for the modules and drivers, my work would be free.
Anyone who makes a contribution can request this, most people don't, they are just in it for the knowledge, but IF it makes a difference to ANYONE's decision, i will gladly repay your contributions with diodes!
Even if someone doesn't want to contribute, they can indirectly "buy" a diode from me if they need it, and they will all come with full PIV plots, so
you will know the power you got to within 1% even if you don't own an LPM!
That's worth a lot in my oppinion!
Plus, isn't someone collecting all 8x data ??? From what I saw, the highest were just over 500mw on that list.
Yes, my good friend
FrancoRob, who invested a lot of time in compiling the existing 8x diode data, plotting them on the same graph, to compare their slope efficiencies.
I also made an 8x laser for him, at 418mW and he added the full PIV plot i made on my Diode Analyzer....
But the slope efficiency is unfortunatelly the ONLY data we have!
It doesn't tell us ANYTHING about how TOUGH these diodes are, even more so because people are limiting their own use artificially.
What i am proposing here is a completelly different experiment!
The PIV plots will just be used to determine the efficiency of the diodes i will use for the test (i will use the weakest two out of many).
I mean each diode is different. Testing 1 or 2 wont give a very good result.
Maybe I'm wrong though and these normally die at 700mw but everyone's been too afraid to push em that high haha
Each diode is different, if anyone knows this it's me... I tested and killed so many i stopped counting.. :evil:
But the results benefited everyone, in knowing how long diodes will live..
I've been testing them and posting PHR (and later GGW) diode research starting over a year ago in a dedicated thread. (I need to start posting more of my own threads again - a special one for GGW research and so on)
Basically, it's true what you said. People are afraid of killing expensive diodes. Everyone wants them to last, but also to get the most power out of them at the same time.
And at the same time we don't even know what is possible or what is safe!
Do we need to adjust our expectations a little lower, or can we even aim higher?!?
But we are killing them already, however in fear of a "Duty Cycle Monster" it takes months if not a year to accumulate hours of total run-time and see any degradation... :undecided:
See, the problem is, we will never know how much they can do, until we kill a few - you never really know ANYTHING about toughness until they are dead!
And this fear is preciselly the reason i designed my Diode Analyzer and the Cycler Circuit!
- The first makes testing diodes faster and safer...
- The other emulates the forum's average laser use... But it runs the laser 12h per day which normally takes a few months to reach with normal use!
Within a week on the Cycler Cct., we will know everything, and we will know if we are expecting too much from these diodes of if perhaps they can do even more!
But at least we will know what they CAN do - how long they will survive at 400mW..
You see, unlike reds, which have a knee in the graph at some point, telling us where to stop increasing the current, these diodes just keep going forever, until they die.
They are completelly different things, and we don't know ANYTHING about them yet!
PHRs had kinks in their power, which told us where not to set them (altho we did). But they were low power diodes which is why i never set them to more than 120mW in my lasers, even tho i could sell twice as many if i increased the power to 150mW or even more! However then i'd be replacing diodes a lot!
But my lasers, which i made over a year ago all still work (except three which required a new diode and were repaired for free - that's three out of around 70 or 80 PHR lasers!)
This is in large part due to my diode testing and selection process - i always lost a lot of money on the weak diodes i couldn't use. I killed most, and gave the rest of the weak ones away to a forum member for free (cos he asked) even tho they cost me $26 a piece in an early GB, where i bought too many in fear they might run out (the Chinese kept lying to us)...
But PHRs are 50 +/-10mW diodes in rated CW power, 80-120mW Pulsed MAX... That's why i never set them higher than 120mW in my builds.. I wanted them to be reliable. (Of course if you get several you CAN set them higher they will still last a couple of months... :angel
When it comes to 6x's and 8x's, we don't even know their RATED CW POWER FOR SURE, which should have been the basis for this hobby, if we want to do more than just kill them slowly.
I've seen people make 330mW 6x lasers, while i don't set them higher than 250mW raw power (before lens @200mA max), except with the best of freaks!
See, i want my builds to be reliable lasers that last a "lifetime" (or outlive the users interest at least). Not just a thing you need to keep replacing the diode in! Unfortunatelly we don't have diodes that could screw in like lightbulbs...
And with 6x's i know enough by now to do this reliably. See my signature, go read my thread for more info about how i do things...
It's a long thread, but you will see i dedicated allmost all my laser money to fund more diode research and post it on this forum, sharing what i learned about diodes as i went along.
We now know that we can push all diodes to their pulsed powers or higher!
The 100mW Nichia diode was the only one we ever got with partial specifications, but the test results were invaluable!
It was the first to proove this - it went to 265mW after my glass lens, but the 405nm's are weird to say the least!
This thaught us that 6x's are also 100mW diodes.
But the ones we got were not QC Rejects, but Prototyping discards!
However starting from 8x's at least they are at least becoming CONSISTENT! They HAVE to be consistent to work in drives!
I predicted this would happen with higher powers, but i thought it would begin with 6x's...
Unfortunatelly we couldn't afford too many 6x's from drives to test for consistency, altho it was MUCH higher than with the PROTOTYPE discards.
These prototypes which also show signs of sled model progression in several versions. Dave found three visually and Rkcstr sorted them from me using photos! And funnily enough, the three sled versions contained completelly different diode efficiencies, v3 was highest, v1 was high and v2 were all over the place!
The diodes have strong wavelength variations, for example i have once made 200mW+ 6x laser with extremelly short wavelength for scientific purposes...
He has a spectrum analyzer and he measured one i made especially for him at under 400nm (it was a short wavelength request, i achieved it by relative sorting by wavelength using special filters)...
Others again were made with wavelengths as high as 412nm or more! They look visually brighter, while short wavelengths actually burn slightly better or so i'm told!
All diodes are different, but by now i can actually give Diode Warranty with my lasers, simply from all the experience i gathered over the past 18 months...
The fact that this is a waste of money and that people are AFRAID of using their lasers (because of the Duty Cycle Myth) is the REASON why we HAVE to do this as a forum!
Anyone can afford to invest a minimal $10 sum, especially if they get a diode from me with half an hour of work in it for the PIV plot, which i will print for each diode i donate for this purpose!
The basic idea is that the specs posted elsewhere scared me, as they seemed to indicate only 240-250mW rated PULSED power for 8x diodes!
We push them to 400 or even 500mW, while the recommended power by my standards would be 330mW MAX if the above info is correct!
The only way for us to EVER learn ANYTHING is to sacrifice a few diodes for our tests.
I can do so in a safe way, that will guarantee the diodes will only be harmed by their own optical flux. My Cycler Circuit was realized with the help of an engineer friend of mine and has multiple safeties for diode protection when the diode is attached in an ESD free environment..
So what i expect to happen is this:
We won't learn the exact rated CW power from this experiments, but i have a basic idea, i now believe 8x's to be 120-150mW CW diodes, 240-300mW PULSED...
Altho i fear 150mW is only for 12x's now, until Larry shows me where he found his data that they are 220mW CW/450mW PULSED....
The drawings only showed 300mW for 12x's, and since they always talk about pulsed power, it made me more than a little worried...
So this experiment will serve several things...
- I kill two $175 diodes, and we learn invaluable things about HOW LONG a diode can survive at 400mW+ with normal use.
- Testing a second diode COULD also allow me to disproove the Duty Cycle myth once and for all, because i could make it live longer by running it for longer at once, like 5min ON / 5min OFF...
I would expect the second diode to live longer due to less Power UP/DOWN related stresses, of course i would keep it cool with a good press-fit Heatsink/Module powered by a high efficiency boost driver....
- Alternativelly the second diode could be the confirmation of CONSISTENCY of diode "toughness" to show they are not as different from each other, and create an expected range, if it is tested using the same protocol...
The experiment will also allow me to measure the degradation of laser diodes over time, as time will be accelerated here. We will know three months of intense laser use after a SINGLE DAY, and a year's worth after only FOUR DAYS!
And by intense use, i mean use of a laser for 30 minute laser shows and similar! I did 30 minute power graphs with my first personal 6x diode, it was stable after only three minutes, while most people never turn them on for longer than a single minute...
My future personal 8x laser in the same tiny body will get the same kind of treatment! 30 minute power stability graphs just for the sake of the heatsinking and heat dissipation results! That's gonna be the diode i pay for myself!
If you read my signature, you will see that i recommend NO DUTY CYCLE limit for my laser builds!
This is for two simple reasons:
1. My driver creates no discernible heat, running at body temperature in an enclosed environment inside my v3 Heatsink/Module which uses no AixiZ module, because the heatsink IS the module...
2. My v3 Heatsink/Module accepts the diode directly, minimizing the thermal gradient, and pumping the heat into the laser body - which acts as a secondary heatsink!
Before i made my driver the only one used was the 317 and the FlexDrive didn't exist yet..
I had to develope, draw and etch the drivers and solder them by hand to make something that could power a diode from a single Li-Ion battery..
Three of us worked on the same chip and each made our own driver with it, it's a very stable Buck/Boost SEPIC DC/DC converter running at an efficiency of 84% or more.
The current never changes more than 0.2-0.3mA from 5.5V right down to 2.2V making a protected Li-Ion the perfect power source with a stability better than 0.2mA as the Li-Ion goes from 3.9V down to 2.7V before shuttinng down... Because of this the power of the laser is THE SAME every time it is turned ON...
And due to the high efficiency, the driver only creates a few percent of the total heat, making the diode the only heat source that has to be taken care of, unlike with linear drivers where the driver creates two or even three times as much heat as the diode alone!
This makes a boost driver the perfect power source for driving 405nm diodes in a small laser body resulting in an amazing stability of optical power over a long time, even at very high powers!
This is what i will use to torture the 8x diodes i get from the "8x MURDER" Fund, to discover what we can expect from small handheld lasers at a high power - i want the conditions of the test to be exactly like a small laser, so i will use a small laser for the test!
It barelly costs you anything except a PHR diode or two which you will get from me - for the first time a diode will even come with a full PIV plot for free.
It will cost me a lot of time, but i'll gladly do it all for free, just for what EVERYONE HERE will learn from all this!
Basically we will find out one thing that is important to us - how long our expensive diodes will last at the powers we set them to....
It is time we finally learn something about the diodes we are using now and which will hopefully become available cheeaper in the near future....
Look, i once wasted/spent $1500 of my own money from lasers on AR coated glass lens research and diode experiments! We now have good glass lenses for our lasers, even tho i will never get that money back!
Not to mention all the time i invested into this hobby with all the devices i developed and made to test diodes! I spend half of my day doing my real job (Electronics R&D) and the other half on this laser hobby most of the time... :yabbem:
$350 for two diodes is nothing in comparison to that! If i had that money now i'd gladly pay for the diodes myself!
But if we share this small burden and do it as a FORUM, each investing barelly worth mentioning amount of money into this important experiment, no one is at a loss, and everyone learns the most important (but pretty basic) things about our precious little diodes!
It will not only teach us what to expect from 8x's, but also a little about what to expect from the future 12x's before we even get them, because we will be able to apply some meaning to the few limited numbers we have available!
And in my oppinion this knowledge is worth a lot!
Now that i wrote this absurdelly long post, i'm thinking both diodes SHOULD DEFINITELLY be tested with the exact same test protocol..
Why? Because as you said, they are different, each diode is completelly individual, even tho the only differences are the amount of imperfections in the die..
If they are both tested simultaneously under the same exact conditions, we will also learn another thing - how consistent they are!
I do want some feedback on my test protocol proposals and ideas, but i will post a new thread for the test itself!
And awesome to see so many others contributing! Gotta love LPF.
