Sony 24x/10x/40x Burner would be good?

[TimTom]

hi community,

today my father gave me a burner, exact designation is in the title or here:
SONY CD-R/RW Drive unit CRX175A1 24x 10x 40x (Y23) | eBay

it is 'very' old so.. would it be good for a laser? what do you think you much mw i can got from the diode in it?

thanks in advance,

~ Tim

 

[TimTom]

oh okay..

i pilled it out now and noticed, that the pins at the back of the diode are only 1mm long.. ._.

 

[crazyspaz]

Pin length doesn't determine power output....

there should be a sticker somewhere that says "class ## laser". It is pretty ancient, so i am guessing it only has a class 1 or 2 laser diode in it, which won't burn squat- it will only be like 5mW. You would want it to say class 4, if you want something that will burn.

 

[trencheel303]

Pin length doesn't determine power output....

there should be a sticker somewhere that says "class ## laser". It is pretty ancient, so i am guessing it only has a class 1 or 2 laser diode in it, which won't burn squat- it will only be like 5mW. You would want it to say class 4, if you want something that will burn.

As far as I know CD drives only ever have a label on them for class 1 at best. Regardless of the power of the diode inside, the drive is still a class 1 as it's a laser contained in an enclosure that under normal circumstances will never leak the collimated light.

Class I laser product
No known biological hazard. The light is shielded from any possible viewing by a person and the laser system is interlocked to prevent the laser from being on when exposed. (large laser printers such as the DEC LPS-40 has a 10mW HeNe driving it which is a Class IIIb laser, but the printer is interlocked so as to prevent any contact with the exposed laser beam, hence the device produces no known biological hazard, even though the actual laser is Class IIIb. This would also apply to CD players and small laser printers, as they are Class I devices).


As you read here as long as the general user cannot view the laser in operation then the device is class 1. Therefore it does not matter how many lasers in the device as long as the lasers cannot be view while the lasers are operating.

So these devices should be class I unless made of transparent material.

Regardless, research suggests that the diode from a CD drive is not gonna be particularly powerful and will be deep (almost IR) red.

There may be a possibility to burn things, but it will require a tight focus and won't be much:
http://danyk.cz/laser_en.html

A cool project nonetheless.

 

[crazyspaz]

Huh...good to know. Although I have seen class 4 warning labels on many burners...

 

[trencheel303]

I've never taken a great deal of notice, but I can only ever remember seeing yellow square labels and never the one with a line and the dazzle symbol (the same ones you get on pointers) which IIRC are class 2 and above. My PS2 drive has just the yellow square label, I had nearly a dozen CD/DVD drives that I threw in the bin before I got into lasers... that and harvesting a working HeNe from a laserdisc player are my next projects.

 

[TimTom]

okay.. thank you :0