Salvaging the parts from a "5mW"

[Kmor2004]

I killed the pump diode on a little green point module I had after I butchered the driver for a different laser since I already had a 5mw green, but now that I've fially gotten the pump diode and the rest of the stuff out of the housing, I was wondering if it is possible to replace the pump diode with a slightly more powerful one at some point to at least be able to get a more visible beam, without needing new doubling parts or without damaging them.

 

[rocket689]

To a point. Once the crystals have reached their "saturation" point, they become very inefficient. At that point it takes more pump mw input to make more mw output. At the extreme, you can burn out the facets of the crystal if too much power is applied.

 

[Kmor2004]

And I suppose theres not really a way of telling how much the crystal and lens's can handle huh....

 

[savingbirds]

nope, but 5mWs are cheap and you can experiment with little risk, though I don't recommend it...