diode pin out

[andy_mouse_brown]

Hi all
thanks for your help so far
Please could you tell me how to determine the pin out of an unknown LD as I have one from a dvd rom drive and one from a CD player to fiddle with,both with 3 pins but no markings, the CD one is mounted in a brass barrel aprox 8 mm in diameter the other is aprox 4mm, also i have the optics which may be usefull one day. Any usefull things to be done with the photo detectors?
Where would you guys and gals recomend to buy LD's with a wide range of frequencys and power outputs
I appreciate any help you can give me and hope I am not clogging up your great forum with my questions if you get fed up you will have to find me ha ha [smiley=dankk2.gif]

 

[chido]

Most red diodes have this pin out:

If you want to find out the + and - of an unknown LD then you take your multimeter and set it to the diode testing function, it looks like this in your multimeter

(image by Kenom)
Then just take your probes and touch all the pins until the LD lights up.
You can get high powered red laser diodes here. This is their power graph:

 

[phoenix77]

Hi & Welcome to LPF, besides this Forum, there is a site called 'SAM'S laser FAQ' It contains a wealth of information pertaining to lasers. I refer to it quite often, besides picking the brains of the knowledgeable people sprinkled throughout this Forum. Happy & Safe lasering to you phoenix77

 

[jamilm9]

my meters dial has the diodes tester but under it it says 2 k.Is it ok for a blu-ray to.

 

[chido]

I know it works for reds, but I don't know about bluray diodes.

 

[jamilm9]

ok thanks