Drivers for 808nm 1W laser diodes?

[Hank]

Are their any drivers, cheap ones preferably, that is used to power the 9mm 1W 808nm laser diode found on eBay?

 

[kobi g]

I bought one on DX $1.5
I build one 1W 808 also and I had no problems with it.

 

[udanis]

I'm sure there are. Read up upon here as to the driver spec you need then search ebay.

 

[AUTO XX]

The main problem is how stable the driver is.
A LED driver will theoretically work, the problem is the basic design is made for a load that is a lot tougher.
A LED can take some pretty severe power spikes and not take any damage.
A laser diode taking the same spike will fry instantly.
One thing you can do is throw a couple capacitors on the diode, on the driver Vout, etc.
Then again, there are some chip (amc7135 comes to mind) that treat the capacitors like a short and don't function properly.
There are a lot of very intelligent people on LPF that have tried a lot of different drivers.
A few hours reading might save you a lot of cash.

*I have killed a nichia 445nm and a couple of infrared (1W+) diodes from poor quality drivers*

 

[Rafa]

lm317+good heatsink+3W resistors should suffice.

 

[AUTO XX]

yup, the ddl driver is still one of the best, easiest drivers when you are learning how to play with lasers.

 

[benmwv]

If you want cheap, easy, and premade go with the led drivers from dx, but be sure to add output caps. If you are reasonably good with a soldering iron and prefer the diy experience and satisfaction make yourself an lm317.

 

[rhd]

If you want cheap, easy, and premade go with the led drivers from dx, but be sure to add output caps. If you are reasonably good with a soldering iron and prefer the diy experience and satisfaction make yourself an lm317.

I second benmwv's suggestion. In fact, if you're NOT reasonably good with a soldering iron, this is even moreso the way to go. You'll find building a custom LM317 is easier than soldering the tiny bridges and leads onto a Flexdrive etc.

Plus, you can have fun trying to make the tiniest most compact LM317 drivers. If it wasn't for the fact that they can't boost voltage for single-cell host builds, I'd use the LM317 circuit all the time. It's a fun circuit to play around with as you're just getting into this (as I am).

*hint - If you don't have 3W resistors on hand, you can probably get by using two parallel 1W resistors with double the ohm rating you're looking for.

So if you wanted 1200mA, you'd normally use a 1 ohm resistor, and you'd want it to be a 2W resistor. If you only have 1W resistors, just use two resistors that are 2 ohms, in parallel, and you'll end up with 1 ohm, and since the power will be split between two resistors, each one just carries half the power (so you're basically creating a 2W 1ohm resistor)

 

[ronox]

Is there any way to build a LM317 driver that will work on as low as 3V? Everywhere i look, it always says the regulator needs at least 5V to function.

 

[Cube777]

Here is a nice PDF I found on the web one day, the lm2941 driver has a very small voltage drop(0.5V) and doesn't get hot. I am currently building a laser with a LPC-826 running of a lm2941 working with 2 X 14500 batteries. The only thing that get's hot is the resistors (using resistors with a lower power rating than suppose to because of little space in the host)!

 

[lasersbee]

Is there any way to build a LM317 driver that will work on as low as 3V? Everywhere i look, it always says the regulator needs at least 5V to function.

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Jerry

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