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FrozenGate by Avery

Blu-ray diode voltage drop

Joined
Mar 25, 2009
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I'm building a blu-ray handheld pointer and I have all the components I need (just got the last piece of the puzzle today - Jayrob's heatsink!).

I want to build a dummy load to set the current for my lavadrive. I have a pile of 1N4001 diodes, but I don't know how many to use to simulate the voltage drop of the blu-ray diode.

I'm not even sure exactly what diode I have. I bought it from a website from Asia - it's in an Aixiz housing and came with a driver circuit, but the board is too big to fit into my host, which is why I went with lava's MicroFlexDrive. Will four 1N4001 diodes in series with a 1 ohm resistor be sufficient, setting the pot based on the voltage drop across the resistor?


I'm powering my circuit with two CR123A batteries, so I have to solder a diode in series with the power lead to drop the voltage to the maximum 5.5V. It's been a while since I've worked with diodes, so does the stripe (cathode) go to the laser diode's positive lead, with the other end of the 1N4001 diode going to the positive lead on the battery?


On a side note, I had planned on making a 150mW blu-ray burning laser, however this this is scary. With the 100mW driver circuit I have, the beam is painful to look at and gives me a headache. I think I'm going to tone it way down as low as I can go with the lavadrive.
 





Here's a thread by Dr. Lava that shows the polarity of the silicon diode to drop voltage. This goes between your driver and battery supply.:
http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1210054203

For a test load, you must be aware of the polarity of the diodes as well. With a FlexDrive, I believe 4 will be fine. But I know for sure that 6 silicon diodes work perfectly. Because that is what I used before I got my rkcstr test loads.

See this diagram from rog881: (this shows a DDL driver with 4 diodes for red, but it will work the same for blu-ray and any driver using 6 silicon diodes)
http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1197651171#1
Jay
 





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