DIY RED LASER (first ever for me)

[dylantrevors]

hey i have a question. i ripped open an old cd drive today to see if i could even find a diode. what i found was a strange square shaped chip attached to a ribbon cable. it looked like it had a crystal in it.

is this some other type of diode?

 

[styropyro]

hey i have a question. i ripped open an old cd drive today to see if i could even find a diode. what i found was a strange square shaped chip attached to a ribbon cable. it looked like it had a crystal in it.

is this some other type of diode?

Double post? That's weird, well anyway here was my reply:

In that CD drive there is an invisible 1mW Laser Diode which is basically useless. There should be a diode in there that looks exactly like the one you pulled from the DVD burner.

 

[dylantrevors]

so there is the invisible one which is the one i found and then one other one?

 

[chido]

Is this a CD burner or a reader? If it's a reader then all you're going to see is that "crystal" diode, if it's a burner then you should find and IR diode, it will look exactly like the diode from the DVD burner.
I wouldn't recommend playing with it unless you get some proper eye wear as IR can be more dangerous than visible light.

 

[dylantrevors]

ok its just a reader. yeah i dont want to mess with ir. because you dont know if its on or not so you have to be really careful.

 

[chido]

A reader is useless, the IR diode won't be more than 5mW.

 

[dylantrevors]

yeah im waiting for an email from my local pc shop if they have any broken dvd burners