Boost/Buck driver

[badboybilly]

Hey
Great news, just saw a new buck/boost driver from Xwoosy-Vladimir I’m not sure if it’s been discussed yet, I hope he comes out with a much higher current boost driver next but for know this Is great, a reliable good quality driver for our precious expensive diodes, What do you all think!

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com.au/ulk/itm/153009590619

 

[Alaskan]

Fills a need, looks nice, this guy is really moving forward with some nice drivers, I remember his first offering, bought some of those.

 

[deadshadow]

looks good but i'd still vote for astralist's new pico drive,has better price and can work up to 1.5A current also. just personal preference

 

[Alaskan]

and..... a better price from Astral. These two guys are our Yin-Yang laser diode driver suppliers with their black and white boards, the white hat cheaper, but I do like those black boards, they are beautiful and the way he has a cut out to make the driver smaller, if you want a reduced size, is great.

 

[LewDude]

Interesting, for sure. Thanks for sharing. Might have to try one out, but echoing Alaskan: more expensive. Also, likely to take longer to arrive (for me). Been super happy with Astalists responsiveness and products.

Love having choices!

 

[paul1598419]

I had one dead driver in my most recent batch from astralist. Was wondering if anyone else has run into this? I always put leads on both sides of any driver I am going to use. Then I check/set it with a dummy load before actual use. The reason I solder leads to these drivers is you don't want to have an intermittent diode connection as that will kill your driver. :undecided:

 

[deadshadow]

I had one dead driver in my most recent batch from astralist. Was wondering if anyone else has run into this? I always put leads on both sides of any driver I am going to use. Then I check/set it with a dummy load before actual use. The reason I solder leads to these drivers is you don't want to have an intermittent diode connection as that will kill your driver. :undecided:

i had one driver that was shorted on first try-arrival, after some testing steps i found out that one capacitor on the board was internally shorted,ic chip didn't survive though

 

[LewDude]

Which driver did you both have issues with? There's been a few versions, I think I had a similar issue with an older LV boost, but it's been a couple months and I might be mixing things up.

 

[paul1598419]

i had one driver that was shorted on first try-arrival, after some testing steps i found out that one capacitor on the board was internally shorted,ic chip didn't survive though

I believe mine had the same problem. The input supply for the driver has very low resistance and since it is a boost driver, I suspect there is little that can be done for it. This is the new Pico Driver. I hope this does not become a common problem for these. :thinking:

 

[deadshadow]

im talking about pico driver also,mine was just shorted with 0 ohm resistance on the output,i had to unsolder the 2 output capacitors to find out that short is gone and one of the capacitors was the reason.

im ok thought as i got lucky and bought 1 extra for my builds,astralist offered a replacement and will shipped with my next order that will include the new boost superdrive

 

[Alaskan]

I received a few of those too, will need to check those capacitors for shorts, thank you for the heads up.

 

[BowtieGuy]

I just received my order of pico drives also, I hope I'm lucky and all are working properly.

 

[paul1598419]

Definitely check them before using them. I guess since you have to set the current this should go without saying. I was surprise to have one that had no output.

 

[RedCowboy]

I'm glad to see it, hopefully he makes some bigger drivers as well, 10 amp, 15 amp would be nice for multi diode builds and some bigger IR, I have some silicon gap pads for thermally bonding his drivers from the back, so far they work just fine but I also use a couple dabs of FUJIK thermal mounting paste just to insure they stay put. :beer: Glad to see new drivers.