Re: 6x Blu-ray SLEDS GB! THEY ARE GOING FAST!
Well, mine is at around
70 hours now. Still alive and kicking!
Today it's putting out
152-153mW. Every day it's a little less, but it just won't die. At this point it would probably have lived a year in the hands of an average user, possibly even more, due to the use declining with time...
With PHRs, i have a feeling, that at 110mW they can go either way - either they slowly degrade, or they COD, but the latter is rare. Usually they just degrade and degrade untill the power gets really low, but it's mostly a slow process. If you go higher than that, like 150mW, they degrade a little and then COD, lower than that, they just degrade so slowly, that you might not even notice it during normal use..
It's possible, that 150mW is similar for the 4x's. I'm surprised it lost so much power and hasn't COD'd yet. I hope i'm not just lucky with this one, and that they are all like this, because at this point i believe the 4x is not a bad diode! If it can supply >150mW and last for a year even in my hands, it's better than any PHR i have seen so far. This particular diode at 150mW so far seems more reliable than some PHRs at 100mW. Altho PHRs have much higher losses in lenses, so the same power after a plastic lens means a PHR is putting out much more raw power behind the lens. It's so many variables, that it can all get confusing!
I'm staring to think, that 100-110mW with PHRs, 140-150mW with 4x's and 180-200mW with 6x's is a similar "limit". My 6x is also slowly degrading but hasn't COD'd yet... In all cases i am talking about
after lens power of course. Even tho there are different losses in the lenses even among the same diode model, there are certain averages.
A PHR driven bellow the first kink would probably live for thousands of hours. For a PHR that would be around 90mW. From what Kage described in PMs, the first kink with a 4x is at around 140mW, where the beam distorts and the power drops, sometimes even to 115mW.. Rkcstr's graph shows the first kink at just after 140mW as well, but it's not as bad as in Kage's case, altho it is possible that the current increments in that graph jumped over the worst of it.
I just finished a "diode analyzer" yesterday, so i will be able to test the remaining 4x's in much greater detail than so far. Let's see what the others are like... I have 12 more to test, but it probably won't be destructive testing...
Mophead: Look at Rkcstr's graph to see where 130mW is with an AixiZ lens. That could bring you life in the order of a thousand hours, or more. But even if it was "only" several hundred, the diode would probably outlive your interest in it.
Just make sure the beam profile is not distorted, because that would mean you are in the middle of the kink. If you project an enlarged spot on the wall, and the light is not evenly distributed, but "bent" off to a side, reduce the current a little until the spot is even. That would probably give you what you're looking for. Even if you don't have a meter, you can find the first kink this way, and adjust the diode slightly bellow it. But if you adjust it to just under the kink, when it's warm, the diode will drop back into it as it cools off, and the efficiency is higher! So for maximum life it should be under the kink when cold.
The power would be no higher than with many PHRs, but the life would be much longer. But like PullBangDead said, there are no guarantees. All the suggestions are just certain averages. For 8000 hours, you would have to drive it at 105mW before the lens = 85mW after the lens. But none of us really needs 8000 hours....
