Well I thought I ought to introduce myself, as I search through posts I often see "post in the welcome forum first" so although it's not my first post it's a start in the right direction I think.
The short and skinny, I'm 33 and live up in the Olympic Peninsula, about 50 miles west of Seattle. I do computer work for a living, from service to networking and routing.
I'd say I first really got interested in lasers when I was given a green laser pointer at a job of mine, if I recall that was 2007-2008ish so I don't think it was too cheap at the time. After leaving that job, and keeping that laser, I took it apart and cranked up the pot. Thing got bright, nice visible beam. Had that little laser for years, don't know what happened to it, lost it somewhere around 2010 but I digress. About that time frame I started to notice the blue lasers from Wicked Lasers and while I drooled over them I (thankfully) never pulled the trigger to purchase one. After that it was out of sight out of mind.
Several months ago I stumbled back upon WL and their balloon popping videos and started to do more googling, which led here, to LPF. Here I found a massive list of reasons to not purchase from WL and members who were friendly and who sold their own builds. So I picked up a 1.3W 445, and glasses, for less than I had expected to pay elsewhere. That blue laser was magic for about two months until (don't ask . . .) I ripped the copper aixiz module out of the aluminum heatsink (C6 host) including tearing the leads off the diode. BUT this was also the start of my learning as I decided my broken laser was not dead but just needed some love. A couple PM's and some solder later I'm back in action.
That damn 1.3W+ 445 is bright, unreasonably bright. While I did play around with it at first for a bit (using goggles when I felt they were needed) I realized that seeing tracers from just passing the beam against a wall twenty feet away was probably not a good thing. So I got a host kit and 50mw dpss module. This now is my "toy" laser to get the dog to chase.
Being that I work at an ISP a lot of dead computers come through, and with a lot of dead computers are a lot of still working dvd burners, giving me a decent supply of diodes. I LED'd several while learning (and I'm sure I'll kill many more.) Picked up a few tools, diode press, some of that very nice silicone wire, a C6 host with aluminum heatsink, batteries, the works. Using one of the aixiz drivers I rigged a dvd burner diode into the c6 host and got it working. It was pretty inside but it did work and that made me smile.
Leading me to now. More searching and more reading got me to take that one apart and start testing case's conductivity and trying to sort things out. I've got an LPC-826 and BlitzLinear driver on order from CajunLasers, and while I thought I understood how to set it up, the more I read the less I know. But that's a different thread, since these cost more than free diodes and cheap aixiz drivers, I'm sure I'll be posting for help here soon!
So that's me, hello to everyone, those that I've dealt with via PM's have been amazing to deal with, very helpful, I thank you all.
The short and skinny, I'm 33 and live up in the Olympic Peninsula, about 50 miles west of Seattle. I do computer work for a living, from service to networking and routing.
I'd say I first really got interested in lasers when I was given a green laser pointer at a job of mine, if I recall that was 2007-2008ish so I don't think it was too cheap at the time. After leaving that job, and keeping that laser, I took it apart and cranked up the pot. Thing got bright, nice visible beam. Had that little laser for years, don't know what happened to it, lost it somewhere around 2010 but I digress. About that time frame I started to notice the blue lasers from Wicked Lasers and while I drooled over them I (thankfully) never pulled the trigger to purchase one. After that it was out of sight out of mind.
Several months ago I stumbled back upon WL and their balloon popping videos and started to do more googling, which led here, to LPF. Here I found a massive list of reasons to not purchase from WL and members who were friendly and who sold their own builds. So I picked up a 1.3W 445, and glasses, for less than I had expected to pay elsewhere. That blue laser was magic for about two months until (don't ask . . .) I ripped the copper aixiz module out of the aluminum heatsink (C6 host) including tearing the leads off the diode. BUT this was also the start of my learning as I decided my broken laser was not dead but just needed some love. A couple PM's and some solder later I'm back in action.
That damn 1.3W+ 445 is bright, unreasonably bright. While I did play around with it at first for a bit (using goggles when I felt they were needed) I realized that seeing tracers from just passing the beam against a wall twenty feet away was probably not a good thing. So I got a host kit and 50mw dpss module. This now is my "toy" laser to get the dog to chase.
Being that I work at an ISP a lot of dead computers come through, and with a lot of dead computers are a lot of still working dvd burners, giving me a decent supply of diodes. I LED'd several while learning (and I'm sure I'll kill many more.) Picked up a few tools, diode press, some of that very nice silicone wire, a C6 host with aluminum heatsink, batteries, the works. Using one of the aixiz drivers I rigged a dvd burner diode into the c6 host and got it working. It was pretty inside but it did work and that made me smile.
Leading me to now. More searching and more reading got me to take that one apart and start testing case's conductivity and trying to sort things out. I've got an LPC-826 and BlitzLinear driver on order from CajunLasers, and while I thought I understood how to set it up, the more I read the less I know. But that's a different thread, since these cost more than free diodes and cheap aixiz drivers, I'm sure I'll be posting for help here soon!
So that's me, hello to everyone, those that I've dealt with via PM's have been amazing to deal with, very helpful, I thank you all.
