Well, I finally broke down and ordered a 20x burner for the diode - a Sony NEC Optiarc 20X AD-7190A
The diode was amazingly easy to get out - no pressing needed, just pried it out with an exacto blade!
It's an open-can, so needed to be a little bit careful - but got it right into a housing (from a DX cheap red).
Hooked it up to a variable regulated current supply, and slowly brought it up... it was lasing at about 50mA, but didn't increase all that much after that - I wondered if it was going to flat-line like that, until it got to about 120mA, when it just suddenly got really bright. I took it up to 200mA, and it seemed pretty stable there.
I brought the power down to 50 and focused it on a candle's wick. Brought it up to 200mA again, and the wick began to smoke - much more vigorously than with my other burner diodes. So I just thought I'd push this baby up a bit...
I thought I'd just gradually increase the current, keeping an eye on it for signs of instability or heat or other obvious distress - risky but hey, it was an experiment :
Went to carefully slide the control up a bit, and the candle wick immediately started to act like it was going to ignite
which distracted my attention, and my current-control hand slipped, and... well, I got a glimpse of the current meter going past 350, there was a bright flash, and I had a $27 red LED.
But for the few moments it was operational, it looked like a good candidate
- worth more experimenting, maybe by someone with a TEC and power meter and deeper pockets.
DanQ
The diode was amazingly easy to get out - no pressing needed, just pried it out with an exacto blade!
It's an open-can, so needed to be a little bit careful - but got it right into a housing (from a DX cheap red).
Hooked it up to a variable regulated current supply, and slowly brought it up... it was lasing at about 50mA, but didn't increase all that much after that - I wondered if it was going to flat-line like that, until it got to about 120mA, when it just suddenly got really bright. I took it up to 200mA, and it seemed pretty stable there.
I brought the power down to 50 and focused it on a candle's wick. Brought it up to 200mA again, and the wick began to smoke - much more vigorously than with my other burner diodes. So I just thought I'd push this baby up a bit...
I thought I'd just gradually increase the current, keeping an eye on it for signs of instability or heat or other obvious distress - risky but hey, it was an experiment :
Went to carefully slide the control up a bit, and the candle wick immediately started to act like it was going to ignite
which distracted my attention, and my current-control hand slipped, and... well, I got a glimpse of the current meter going past 350, there was a bright flash, and I had a $27 red LED.
But for the few moments it was operational, it looked like a good candidate
- worth more experimenting, maybe by someone with a TEC and power meter and deeper pockets.
DanQ