Help the newbie....

[Da_Dude]

Hey...
A cupple questions.

1. How do you find what size of resistor and cap you need to power a diode without breaking it? How Manny volts?

2. Does the color of a laser affect it's ability to burn? Is there a diffrence between a 20mW red and a 20mW green other than the color?

:-[ :-/
Thanks....

 

[styropyro]

For the voltage of the laser you need to look up the spec sheet of your laser diode. To find the resistance in ohms of the resistor you need you can use this formula:

(Input Voltage) - (Voltage drop of diode)/needed current in amps = resistance in ohms.

 

[f22warzone]

and as for the second question 20mw is 20mw no matter what color the only thing that the color effects to is what you are able to burn say if you have 20mw of green it will burn red items better than green items because as you know the way we see color is the object reflects light of that color and if its reflecting that color then it is not absorbing the energy of the laser light witch is what causes items to burn. So if you have a green laser, look at a color wheel and it should tell you that you will be able to burn red the best since it is directly opposite and the farther away from red you are the harder it will be to burn them because of reflecting the green light energy.

Michael

 

[Da_Dude]

Where are the specs on SenKat's diodes?

 

[a_pyro_is]

GIYF sld1236vl
Should find you a datasheet. I don't know if SenKat still has it linked on his sales site.

As to your first question, see my post here