Thanks Down with Umbrella ! Yes, it's been a learning experience. I should write a book "How not to build a laser".
I should have named it Phoenix since it arose from the ashes :crackup:
Hey COMMANDR ! Last night I carried an extra battery with me and swapped them out when I took it outside to play with it. My battery monitor is suppose to show up today. I think a host with a 26650 and a good clicky switch would work well. This laser is kind of like me, stupid crazy with no logical explanation for existing.
Thanks sinner ! It's been a fun build ! Now I can start my builds in those beautiful copper hosts ! :beer: It does seem like great times ! I'm learning and the diodes keep getting crazier !
Disassembled the tailcap to see if I could do anything to help it. I took the brass contact and soldered it to the center contact spring. Took the outer spring and soldered it to the aluminum housing and to the ground ring of the contact board. The tailcap doesn't heat up anymore and my output is up to 5.6w. I know that didn't help the rating of the contacts in the switch but maybe it will let it run long enough to test the best lens for it
I'm thinking about trying to adapt a McClicky switch over to this host.
Tried about 20 different lenses. 5.6w with a G2 is as high as I can get. It's a G2 lens from Survival Lasers and it's not the first build I got the highest output with their lens. I wish I knew why. I get 4.4w with a 3 element. That's the lens I'm running on it. The beam/spot looks so much better in my opinion with the 3 element it's worth the sacrifice of the output reading on an lpm.
I disassembled it far enough to inspect the wiring and all looks good. My clicky switch lives so far
I have pieces coming to try and upgrade it. If I can't make them fit I'm going to build a switch out of a solid copper contact and just twist the tailcap to turn it on and off.
The green Panasonic 3400mah 18650 with protection does surprisingly well. I have an Orbtronic which is suppose to be the same battery I thought, but it gets warm where the protection circuit is and will shut off. I have some high drain unprotected Panasonics on order to test it with.
To install the battery monitor I will have to modify the circuit board. I found a smaller battery monitor that I'm going to try before I modify the one I have.
The wiring doesn't melt. The drives don't get hot. I have a battery that works good. Get the tailcap modified and a way to monitor the battery and this will be a really nice laser. Surprises me actually it turned out this nice. With a 3 element lens this thing is still a burner like I can't believe.
So if somebody wants to build one like it, it actually works
I would recommend using a host that can hold a 26650 if you want your battery to last more than about 15 minutes of runtime < that's a guess, I haven't actually timed it.
If something goes bad or gets better I'll report back :beer: