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Final Stage: Battle Royale

I would say the diode blow! :cryyy:
jimmyoneeye said:
I have a confusing situation here. When I power up the laser, I am only getting a very dim dot. Close in brightness to my 320ma red but a bigger dot. Everything tests out ok on the meter. I have three 1.8a x-drive v6's in parallel to get 5.4a at the diode. :( any ideas?
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jimmyoneeye said:
I have a confusing situation here. When I power up the laser, I am only getting a very dim dot. Close in brightness to my 320ma red but a bigger dot. Everything tests out ok on the meter. I have three 1.8a x-drive v6's in parallel to get 5.4a at the diode. :( any ideas?
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Couple things. The X-drives are not meant to be paralleled. Hopefully we have just effectively stacked the resistors on them and are getting 1/3 the current of an individual one. I don't know if they can be damaged by doing that but I know I have been told running them in parallel by Lazeerer a no-no.

Also is your power source ground isolated from the heatsink the diode is on. These diodes are case/negative and the X-drive can not run with a continuous ground so if it was it could have bypassed regulation altogether and that may be why you are reading over 5A to the diode as from what I was told even paralleled they can not pass the 3A limit of the regulator.

Do you have a bench supply?

Hopefully Lazeerer can chime in.:(
 
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If there are no speckles either it isn't lasing or you didn't get what I meant by speckles.. laser light interferes with itself, which makes the dot look like a lot of tiny bright and dark speckles. If the dot is "smooth" it's acting like an LED, which happens with too little current or a dead diode.
 
It seems underpowered more than damaged. the lens tube is working fine. I had asked on the X-drive information page, and was told that the drives were fine to parallel. However, In light of DTR's input... that probably is it.

I am going to go scream "not popped" out the window!

I know what you mean by speckled. It seems like a normal dot. It isn't really dim... just not really bright like it should be. David bowie could not dance down this beam! That is not good enough!
 
the ones I had to go bad look good, but I could not get the power to go up just around 200mw or so was the max.
jimmyoneeye said:
It seems underpowered more than damaged. the lens tube is working fine. I had asked on the X-drive information page, and was told that the drives were fine to parallel. However, In light of DTR's input... that probably is it.

I am going to go scream "not popped" out the window!

I know what you mean by speckled. It seems like a normal dot. It isn't really dim... just not really bright like it should be. David bowie could not dance down this beam! That is not good enough!
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I would say this is about 600mw which supports DTR's 1/3 power from 3 parallel drives. I have a 320mw 650 I compared it to and it is definitely brighter than that. What I should have done was get a single drive set to 4a and heat sunk it to the cooling system. I was trying to get extra power and reduce heat by spreading out the work.
 
If you find a good 4a drive let me know Thanks!
I use a $85 5A 808 driver and it worked at 4a then blow the diode at 5A I am afraid to use it now!

jimmyoneeye said:
I would say this is about 600mw which supports DTR's 1/3 power from 3 parallel drives. I have a 320mw 650 I compared it to and it is definitely brighter than that. What I should have done was get a single drive set to 4a and heat sunk it to the cooling system. I was trying to get extra power and reduce heat by spreading out the work.
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Every X-Drive v6 can do 4A if it's heatsinked well rick. Just ask lazeere or look at his info thread :beer:
 
I do not have a power meter. someday soon I hope. I have some good reference points for the brightness. I am not giving up. First I will try the 1 drive at 1.8a and see if I get a better result. Then I will look for another drive as close to 5a as I can get. Any suggestions? :thanks:

What is nice is to be able to ask this stuff and not get blankly stared at!
 
If you find a good 4a drive let me know Thanks!
I use a $85 5A 808 driver and it worked at 4a then blow the diode at 5A I am afraid to use it now!

I think I was looking that same driver on e-bay?! Ill avoid that one! thanks!
 
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