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[More Power]

I finished my 12x laser, it did not have very solid connections inside and it would not light a match quickly and burned about the same as my 100mw laser. I do not know why. I tightened up my connections a little but Im not sure if it did the trick. It burns the same and I put my 3.6 V trustfire battery in instead of the 3 V energizer. The diode immediatly went dim when I turned it on and went out of focus, please tell me it didn't LED!! Why did this happen, is there anything I can do? I might be selling alot of laser parts soon.

Im very depressed.

 

[Alshere]

You may want to give your setup information. Driver, what you set the driver to etc..

 

[More Power]

Im using a v5 flexdrive set to 330ma, BDR-205 Diode, 405 G-1 lense, Olike heatsink, all in a dorcy Jr.

 

[ElektroFreak]

I finished my 12x laser, it did not have very solid connections inside and it would not light a match quickly and burned about the same as my 100mw laser. I do not know why. I tightened up my connections a little but Im not sure if it did the trick. It burns the same and I put my 3.6 V trustfire battery in instead of the 3 V energizer. The diode immediatly went dim when I turned it on and went out of focus, please tell me it didn't LED!! Why did this happen, is there anything I can do? I might be selling alot of laser parts soon.

Im very depressed.

^This is the cause

Not to sound unsympathetic at all, since hindsight is always 20/20, but here's something that I think should be posted on a billboard:

DO NOT USE EXPENSIVE LASER DIODES TO LEARN HOW TO BUILD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are TONS of $10 diodes (even blu-ray) you could use to learn (and kill) and then once you have some skills, spend the money for an expensive diode.

If you don't know what you're doing, it's pretty easy to piss lots of money away buying and killing expensive diodes. This is just common sense..

And yes, there is a nearly 100% chance that your diode is LED.

 

[daguin]

"Went dim" is a pretty good indicator of a laser diode that has turned into an LED. Weak, loose, intermittent connections will do it every time.

Peace,
dave

 

[Meatball]

This is unfortunate, but appears to be the case this time. Just about everyone here has experienced an LED'd diode. That's why we start with the cheap diodes.. cause it doesn't hurt our wallets so bad when we mess up... and we all mess up sometimes. Try out some PHRs first!