Hey, to confirm using 50 percent or less of the aperture of a PCX lens reduces, or eliminates, the wings being produced by the NUBM44 MM LD, tonight I experimented with the raw output of this diode into a large 7 inch diameter PCX lens. Because the focal length of my big lens was too long to use the raw output of my diode, since the width of the beam at its 18 inch FL was overshooting the edges of the lens, I had to leave the 3 element lens in the pointer but defocused it so the beam output was about 3 inches diameter on the face of the big lens (at its focal length). When doing so, ten feet away from the lens I was able to focus the beam down to less than a quarter inch wide spot without any wings at all, this without any of the beam being cut off. This reinforces my earlier findings using half or less the diameter of a PCX lens with this high divergence multimode diode allows the beam to either be focused to a small spot, or to infinity WITHOUT wings!! No need for a Red Bull!
Due to the relative flatness of lenses with long focal lengths of 12 inches/300mm or more, I believe we would have the same result without needing to reduce the beam to 50% or less the size of the lens diameter. Perhaps 75%? Need more experimentation to know, unfortunately I don't have a selection of lenses with me to experiment more.
Edit July 6: I just received a PM the beam can be 2 inches or so wide 15 feet away when using a G2 lens, even if using 6mm as the starting diameter, which is the lens size, that would mean the divergence of the NUBM44 is close to 10 mRad with that lens, OMG is all I can say about that. If you want more burning power at a distance of 15 feet I'd use at least a 12.5mm diameter lens with twice the FL of the G2, then the beam should be exiting the lens at close to 9mm diameter and at 15 feet away the beam should be less than 1 inch wide.
