My Red Lab Style Laser

[iccy]

I finished my lab style red laser! Its not necessarily "clean looking" however it has a long duty cycle and it REALLY powerful.
Here are some pics


1st pic shows the insides, I made a capacitor array so there was a slow turn on/turn off. I'm not sure it does anything for the diode, but I think it looks cool
I soldered multiple washers together to make the heat sink, and then glued that onto another heat sink below it.
Its powered by 6 aa batteries (obviously) and I'm using a rkcstr driver set at 340 mA.
EDIT: using Stonetek diode

Front of the laser

Look how well it burns!!

Here is a vid


What do you guys think?

 

[jonrobertd]

Nice.... Do the caps actually slow it starting up? If so I might try it in mine. What are the caps value.

 

[Liberty1992]

this is nice, do you know what mW its up to?

 

[iccy]

Nice.... Do the caps actually slow it starting up? If so I might try it in mine. What are the caps value.

Yeah, somewhat.. It wasn't as much as I hoped they would. they are 6.3v 3300uf wired in parallel

this is nice, do you know what mW its up to?

I'm not sure, I dont have a LPM. However when I made it all I had was a 30mw green, 100mw red, and a 100mw blu-ray. So I wanted it to be a little more powerful. I was expecting around 200mw.

 

[jonrobertd]

And they are between the batteries and driver?
Supposedly a slow voltage increase is better for our LDs than slamming them on.
Still I think it is cool.

 

[iccy]

The capacitors dont "slam" on them, they store up energy making the driver slowly power up. When you turn it off, it turns off the battery supply to the driver and only has the capacitor powering up the driver. Since these capacitors dont have a high capacitance, they slowly uncharge. That way there is a slow start up/ turn off.

 

[jonrobertd]

Oh I know it doesn't slam them now, I meant with just a switch. This should be better for them. (unless one or more dumps the load at once) mmmmmm deep fried diode.