Temporary Offer Part 2 - Two MaxMass-Dorcy 6x Blu Ray builds
The HOW...
There are two reasons this build offers the most stable power you will ever see, without some sort of active cooling:
1. The heatsinking
2. The driver
1. The heatsinking:
I designed the MM-MD/Dorcy heatsink/module after rebuilding two Dorcy "lasers" for TheFixerMan. You may have seen that horror story.. It wasn't pretty....
But from the outside, you would not be able to tell the difference from my builds! But it's the insides, that really matter.. All lasers look pretty from the outside!
I specced the heatsinks for his rebuild before i ever saw a Dorcy in person. But when i finally saw the Dorcy for the first time, i noticed there is a lot of unused extra room in the bottom half of the head. Room, that would seem to have been overlooked until then..
This extra room allowed me to do two things:
- Create an absolutelly
massive heatsink, filling up the head entirelly! (look at the pics)
- Create
PERFECT heatsink to host contact, using the Dorcy as a massive secondary heatsink! (just like in my Romisen builds)
I always try to make the most out of each build, regardless of the host it uses.
I design it from scratch, to make the laser as good as it can possibly be, in that particular host.
But the Dorcy host is unusually massive by itself. In my oppinion,
the mass of the host is something, that should never be wasted, regardless of how much or how little it actually is. Afterall, the host is the thing that touches the air. Unless you get the heat from the heatsink into the host, it has no way to leave - it's trapped inside... Heat dissipation into air is slow enough, as it is - air has such a poor thermal conductivity, that it can be used as insulation! If you trap the heat inside, by leaving air between the heatsink and the host, you only make it worse.
If i put the parts on a scale, i get this:
- The
Max-Mass Dorcy heatsink/module i designed for my Dorcy
weighs 24g... (it's the most massive Dorcy heatsink you can find)
- The
Dorcy host itself weighs 52g. This is
52g of aluminum, which can offer an amazing amount of additional heatsinking, but is often not used, or only partially used at best...
By making the heatsink/module fatter at the bottom, it's mass increased A LOT!
But more importantly, it now can not fall through the head anymore! It gets stopped, and pressed against METAL!
Unlike with the classic Dorcy builds, this heatsink/module is not held down by a rubber o-ring, but gets stopped by an inner step in the Dorcy head.
When the body is screwed into the head after the heatsink, the massive head and body grip the heatsink like a vice, creating
two important thermal pathways into the host - one at the inner step of the head, and one at the bottom to the Dorcy body. This way the heat flows from the heatsink into the entire Dorcy host!
2. The driver:
I use a high efficiency switching (boost) driver, which creates no heat by itself, and keeps the current rock steady!
The current coming from my driver on an empty battery is only 0.2mA lower than on a full battery, meaning the diode gets the SAME current ALL THE TIME, right until the moment the battery shuts down -
the power of the laser is EXAXTLY THE SAME, every time you turn it ON, even
on an almost completelly empty battery, the power is still the same as it was on a full battery - it doesn't drop with battery voltage!
When the current is 100% stable, the power of a diode laser depends on one thing only - the temperature. And that is taken care of very well..
The build:
As usual,
the entire guts of the laser are contained within the heatsink. That's why i call it a
heatsink/module - if you attach a battery to it, it's a laser by itself.. The host is just a pretty battery holder and a secondary heatsink (in this case a big one).....
The driver is soldered to the diode directly, and a soft spring extends down, for the positive battery contact, while the negative contact is provided by the heatsink itself.
The design is completelly axial - the heatsink/module can turn as much as it wants, there are no wires to twist or break inside...
At the same time,
the battery DOES NOT press against the driver in ANY way.
Sometimes lasers are built in a way, that makes the tailcap spring press the battery against the driver with a lot of force. If the driver is soldered to the diode pins, and supported by nothing else, it can end very badly - the diode pins can not support that much pressure, and can break sometimes, resulting in a diode that is not dead, but can not be used either...
In cases like that, the driver should be supported by something else. Even if it is just epoxied to the AixiZ module.
But i don't like using glue in my lasers. So instead of having the battery press against the driver, the battery is stopped by the contact board in the top of the battery tube (depopulated Dorcy LED driver PCB - which BTW should NOT be used as a laser diode driver!!).
The soft spring, that extends down from my constant current boost driver, only has to touch the middle of the contact board gently, for the positive battery contact. That way, the only force exerted on it is completelly negligible. The driver gets the negative contact through the heatsink, from the host..
I have this strange idea in my head, that product for sale should be reliable. I don't know why... Maybe because i spent the last 11 years designing and building electronic devices at work. Devices which professional customers use 8 hours a day every day for their work, and expect 110% reliability from them, and then think it's my fault when
they break a cable...
These experiences are the reason why i make my builds so modular and completelly self contained without any wires anywhere in sight - because wires and cables are always the weakest link (even when they are soldered, altho in some builds, they are not :thinking
.
Like all my models, these builds are designed not only for light to come out, but also to withstand heavy use, and abuse on top, without
ever breaking. They definitelly won't fall appart from you trying to turn the lens, like some lasers do....
)
I guarantee, that nothing in this laser can EVER break (
unless YOU dissasemble the heatsink/module, and do something horribly badly wrong to it - as long as the module is assembled, nothing can happen to it, even if you take it out of the body)
The ONLY thing that can EVER happen to the laser is the diode burning out,
if it can't handle the power setting. And the life of the diode depends on one thing, and one thing only - how much power
you ask for! (I will give you suggestions for more reliability or more power...)
There are NO DUTY CYCLE RESTRICTIONS for these builds! If we get 400mW Blu Ray diodes one day, and you put one in here, you might have to use a 20-30 minute duty cycle tho...
)
The WARRANTY:
So, as usual....
- The builds themselves are covered by a full 1 year warranty - i guarantee that the laser won't break, if it does, i repair it for free (this does NOT include the diode, read below for the diode).
- If you go with my power recommendation, the diode is covered by a 3 month warranty. (after that diode replacement is done at cost of diode, if it should burn out)
- If you ask for more power, and the diode burns out, diode replacement is done at cost of diode.
Other info & extras:
-
Battery: The Dorcy obviously works from a CR123 battery. It can be a rechargable Li-Ion, in which case it should be protected, or it can be a primary Lithium, in which case, my driver will suck it down to 2V, and use it to the fullest!
A fully charged pack of two CR123 Li-Ions is included, so you can use the laser the moment you get it!
-
The Power: You can select the power you want. I will try to keep it reasonable tho. I don't want to make 15 hour lasers (that's why i don't sell 150mW PHRs)! But 6x's are tough diodes, which i am willing to set as high as 210mW IF YOU UNDERSTAND what that means (
if you don't, ask...)! The recommendeed power for longevity would be around 170mW, but the 6x's can last surprisingly long even at 200mW! If nothing else, long enough for the replacement diode price to drop...
-
Extras: You get a
full P/I/V plot with each 6x laser, showing the characteristics of your particular diode, as well as a
power vs. time graph, showing the
stability of power.
The plots are made on my Diode Analyzer connected to a <3% accuracy thermal meter.
-
More: You also get a
flexible-legs tripod with clamp suitable for holding the laser, with the Dorcy build.
Here are the pics of the MaxMas-Dorcy Heatsink/Module... This (and my driver) is what makes them special...
P.S. As many of my other ideas, this one was made a reality by DarkHorse, who's work i'm impressed with again and again. :bowdown:
Altho i fear am slowly driving him nuts with all my special requests... :yabbem:
) The one in the picture goes to Glenn, for all the help he offered to me over the time. And just yesterday i got more 4x diodes in.. I hope i find some good ones among them... The good efficiency[highlight] 4x's are just the perfect power for this tiny laser![/highlight]
(as he admits to himself - 'I've always wanted an IgorT build')
