First 445nm dead, help diagnose?

[LeChango]

Hello all, new to these forums and new to lasers as well. I recently took upon the task of building a 445 ~1W laser. My parts are as follows:

Housing
Driver
Diode
10440 3.7v rechargeable li-ion (2)
30 gauge wrapping wire (all I could find)

To start with I put everything together, I could not figure out any other way to get a negative charge to the driver without stretching a wire to the spring on the end cap. I first tried 3 regular AAAs, the driver says it needs at least 5 volts so I didn't expect much out of it. The laser shone but very dimly (maybe 5mw).

I then added a C cell on top out of curiosity and it started to put out much more, enough to see the beam and burn.

I received 2 10440s the next day and stuck them in the battery holder and bridged the empty slot with a piece of my wire. I put everything together and turned it on. Success! But after maybe 60 seconds of use the laser went dim again. I opened it up and realized the wire stretching to the end negative end had become bare in some places and was probably touching the case, I figured a short just drained my batteries.

I then redid my wiring and tried the 10440 batteries again, but this time I had the same weak output problems as before with the normal AAAs. When I went to recharge my batteries again (after only seconds of use) they seemed to be near empty.

I then made the mistake of seeing if maybe the driver was the problem by direct driving the diode from the 10440s, my diode seems to be fried now and I'm almost sure that's why.

But what I'm wondering is why I wasn't getting any results out of the 10440s the second time around after rewiring and recharging? Did I short out the driver? I plan to try this again when I get some extra money. Any help is appreciated.

 

[lazeerer]

First off, you could have used the Case pin on the diode for your Negative path Rather then running a wire all the way down to the - spring on the end cap of the host.

Your 10440 cells might not be able to handle the type of power and possible your batteries are the problem and after dischargeing them so fast you could have damaged the cells. Even those they read full off the charger dosnt me they are ok. I have worked with these drivers alot and 2x 10440 cells dont last long at all.

Please take Pictures of you set up so i can look at it . The more detail pictures the better.

You could possible still have a working laser:can:

 

[LeChango]

I can't find a camera in my house better than 5.1MP :/ so pictures aren't gonna be very helpful. Anyway I do not have it in the housing right now, was just seeing if I could get anything out of the diode but no luck. Oh, and my case pin came cut off. Maybe my batteries did get damaged, they have to be recharged after every time I try to power it, but it only takes about 20 minutes to charge them back up.

 

[lazeerer]

I think your problem is your batteries.

If you need to charge them after each try them thats your problem. If you dint damage anything else wail trying to fix it or what not.

If you disconnected the driver from the diode did you make sure to discharge the Caps on the driver buy rubbing the 2 leads together.?

Are they protected cells.?

5.1MP is Just fine.

 

[Coherent Light]

A 1 watt first Laser is a bad idea anyway...You never mentioned having safety glasses, so a dead build is probably a good thing in this case.

My 0.02

 

[lazeerer]

Good point.


OP do you have safety goggles.?

 

[LeChango]

I'm not quite sure but I don't believe they are protected cells. My diode's been through a lot of soldering now, but I don't think heat killed it.



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Yeah there was more to this then I expected. I built a red 200mw first but I couldn't get it up to power either (probably a good sign I shouldn't have tried this lol), but I've had some success with this one.

And you guessed it, no goggles, but I plan on ordering some if I continue with this project.