Jake:
Yep, that's a great driver choice. I'm going to order another 63133DG and push it a bit. God, I wish someone would do a murder fund on these! But in all seriousness, you should be ok to push yours to 350 at least based on MY experiences. Who knows though if maybe my diode was more (or even less hearty) than normal.
BUT, the datasheet lists 320 as a max, and that's going to be for commercial "long life / reliable" used. It's not a stretch to thing that 350 should be pretty doable. I mean if 350 was "death zone", I can't imagine Opnext telling their industrial partners that 320 would be a safe opporating current. I could be wrong though, but this logic tells me that 400 seems at least possible/reasonable.
Jib's driver would be a great bet. In fact, if you used 4 ohms of resistance, you'd get 312 mA which would be good.
Johnyz:
Right. I think what threw me off was that RPMCLASERS lists the HL6388DG as a single mode on their website. I think they're just wrong.
It has a bit worse divergence than 445s.... but you know what, that's not terrible. 445s are ok, and a bit worse would still be ok. Plus, for $125, and such a high power, that's attractive. I'm going to give one a shot
Cheers