More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL laser?

[Greenhorn]

My Wicked Laser (I know, I know, they're not well-liked here) 95mw green usually has a very hard time lighting a match even when the beam is focused. Sometimes I can't at all. Sometimes it burns OK, and sometimes not, with the same batteries. I started wondering if perhaps it wasn't getting enough voltage, so I added a battery. I suddenly got an amazing boost in power. Conservatively, there's at least a 25% boost, but I would guess as much as 50%. But I'm afraid of killing my laser. It should have a driver that regulates it, and it should easily handle 3 AAAs, and will only give the diode the amount of voltage it wants, right? I wouldn't be shortening the life of the laser by doing that, right? I would guess that the least it would do is shorten the duty cycle.

If so, I am going to try to find a way to permanently add a battery to it.

 

[hydrogenman15]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

It will shorten the life. You can keep the duty cycle as low as you want but your lasers overall life will go down.

--hydro15

 

[Greenhorn]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

It will shorten the life. You can keep the duty cycle as low as you want but your lasers overall life will go down.

--hydro15

Why is that?  With my DIY lasers, I can give it any range of voltage because the driver regulates it.

 

[hydrogenman15]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

[quote author=hydrogenman15 link=1230015093/0#1 date=1230018301]It will shorten the life. You can keep the duty cycle as low as you want but your lasers overall life will go down.

--hydro15

Why is that? With my DIY lasers, I can give it any range of voltage because the driver regulates it.[/quote]

Thing is: I don't know if its a regulated driver and if it is I'm not sure what the max voltage you can put in it is.

--hydro15

 

[Things]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

If your getting a brighter output, obviously the diode is getting more power, which means it will have a shortened life.

 

[Spyderz20x6]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

[quote author=hydrogenman15 link=1230015093/0#1 date=1230018301]It will shorten the life. You can keep the duty cycle as low as you want but your lasers overall life will go down.

--hydro15

Why is that?  With my DIY lasers, I can give it any range of voltage because the driver regulates it.[/quote]
Who knows if they even have a driver?
Who knows if it can handle that much voltage? Maybe the driver can only take 3 volts...

There are different driver designs, you know...

 

[tony70516]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

how can you add another battery?

 

[Xplorer877]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

You're giving the driver a hard time if there is one, which I'm sure there is. It is designed to work with 3v and thats it. Technically speaking an ideal driver will create the proper conditions of voltage and current for the diode regardless of input voltage (assuming its in range). Now your driver is working extra hard to regulate the current/voltage to the diode and it's doing a bad job if your output is brighter. If the driver dies a millisecond later the diode will die. Besides, the crystals are set to saturate at a specific level. I wouldn't recommend continuing with the 50% increase in voltage.

-Tony

 

[lasersbee]

Re: More power with an extra AAA - bad for WL lase

Yeah.... like the Standstone11 532nm Modules... they are designed with a PCB
driver board... but it does not regulate the current/voltage to the LD..

If you increase the input voltage... you increase the current to the LD.. and it gets
brighter (more mW output)..

You would need to know the characteristics of your Pump LD and Xtals to know
if you are damaging them...

Jerry