My New 445nm Lab Laser

[qumefox]

The A240 was the only game in town if I wanted a projector at a reasonable price to disassemble for the diodes and other components. It was also available quickly. As far as the diodes go, they will be the same as the A130 diodes. I have both types and they seem so far to have the same threshold and power output.

I am careful about not frying any diodes with the SSTC.

Ah. the a240 buy makes more sense then if it was the only one available.

Opps... I missed that...:yabbem:
Actually... if the A240 uses the same LDs as the A140 LDs then there
is a difference that I have seen testing the 2 LDS... The A140m seem
to be more efficient as you stated... and worth more money... IMO
Albeit I only tested one of each...

Well binning does make sense from a manufacturing standpoint. Especially dealing with semiconductors that have variable yields simply due to manufacturing processes. I know AMD does it. Quad cores with a bad core get sold as tri cores. Two bad cores gets sold as dual cores. I see no reason for the mass production of LD's to be any different. lower efficiency parts simply get sold as lower power units. It also makes perfect sense for the 2500 lumen projectors to have higher efficiency diodes than the 2000 lumen models. The only way to increase the lumen level is to increase the amount of light the projector puts out, and they have to maintain white balance, so they can't just do it by cranking up the red and green alone. The blue has to increase as well.

Supply and demand also has an effect on this as well to an extent. Again, AMD is a good example. For a while demand for dual core cpu's far exceeded that of quad cores. So to keep up, AMD was having to disable cores on perfectly good quad core cpu's and sell them as dual core. For a while it was possible to unlock those cores and have a usable quad core from having only bought a dual core. Sadly those times are past. heh. But the analogy is valid. If the a130's demand exceeds the supply rate for the binned low efficiency 445 LD's, (or manufacturing processes improve to the point there are less low power parts in the mix) casio will start using the better diodes in the a130 to keep up.

So I think as it stands, if you want to be assured of a better efficiency diode, get one from an a140. The a130's will probably be a crap shoot as far as power output... however when you think about the fact that even the 'weak' a130 diodes are >1 watt... I don't have any problems myself with rolling those dice. :evil: