Lightning stalker!
Very nice work! Is that Altium Designer you're using for the 3D renders?
Thanks. It's rendered with Eagle 3D.
And how the heck are you soldering those SMD parts?
Very carefully. They are mostly reflowed
in an oven when I can. Sometimes they have
to be soldered by hand with a soldering
iron and that takes a lot of patience.
I'm guessing there's very little for safety of the diode in this design?
Well, I did what I could. There aren't any
fault indicators like the Flexmod. It has
the simplicity of a handheld design, the
higher current output required by higher
output diodes, and long runtimes with
adequate heatsinking.
How is the current set? I know theres the trimpot, but is it set by putting an Ameter on the outputs?
It's the same as with any other laser
driver - a laser diode test load.
and is there a standby vs live current?
That would all be handled by the DAC. The
current will be whatever the DAC tells it
to be. So if in your testing, you find
that it begins to mark at say 300mA, you
would figure out what 16 bit value gives
300mA and set that as the baseline.
I was trying to set my current very low at first, just to see it turn on. Test how the diode reacts with my heatsink. I will need to turn another one, cant seem to perfectly nail 11.87mm. Need to get my hands on a reamer or better boring bar.
I am interested. Havent pulled the trigger on that PLD5000 yet.
Will this thing be up to the task of running hours on end?
With the right heatsink and input voltage,
it will run indefinitely.
Ive been playing with some switching supplies here, but, if i had to source a linear supply, that probably wouldn't be too much an issue. Heatsinking isnt an issue. I have plenty here and a buddy with a mill to make one if need be.
My only concern with such a low voltage for modulation is the inconsistency of resistors. Especially based on temperature! I have a 3D laserscanner, in which i used a simple LM317 driver circuit. If its nice n warm-hot out, thing runs just fine. But dead of ohio winter? Im pulling the darn controller board apart, setting the bias, etc. Not saying i wont have that issue with any resistor/component, but when some things drift a few ohms based on temp, nailing that high res is a bit of a concern of mine.
As i said above, this is going on a CNC. Itll be for grayscale image burning/etching. Its proven to work by others. Just takes a long time. Down the road if i get enough orders doing these, i'll be looking to upgrade to a higher power analog laser. I saw your video on the 5W laser and holy hell!
I see in your thread this thing going up to possibly 50A. Any way this can be pushed to say 60A @ 1.7V? Been looking at those coherent diode arrays. Be real nice for marking metal on my CNC. But, I'm not thinking about that til i get this little 2 watt guy to work!
The one that is available will only go up
to 6A. It might do 15A if it is on a nice
flat water block and watched very closely.
The true 15A driver uses some different
parts and is still in development. 60A
would be theoretically possible with the
new parts and a similar design, but it
would be a ways off. As you say, we need
to learn how to crawl before we can learn
how to walk.
