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- Sep 20, 2013
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How long did you run it?
My handhelds never really get much ON time, especially the >1W diodes in flashlight hosts. The lens mount heats up quite rapidly. Maybe 20 seconds tops?
I know if you're burning something it's easy to get carried away and forget how long it's on for.
I've worked with LDs since the mid 1980s back when having visible (red) at room temperature was a wet dream! 780 was common due to the growth of compact disc players. VLDs had internal photodiodes to monitor their output and a decent driver incorporated this to prevent facet damage and/or instantaneous destruction due to runaway depending on environment.
My favorite index guided VLD was the Toshiba TLD9211. Quite good for its time.
Now we have 1W 520nm VLDs. How times have changed.
I miss my handheld HeNe devices. The power supplies were fun to play with too!
I got into lasers back in the early 1980s when I got my first HeNe 632.8nm to make holograms with. Culled from a Pioneer Laser Disc, it was good enough to make 25 inch^2 glass reflection holograms. I got the bug in engineering school when I saw a copy of "The Kiss II" in the physics building in 1974. I now own several and need to find a place to setup another optical bench for holography. :thinking:
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