Think I killed my laser

[Dogs Best Friend]

So, I just put together my 4th laser. It is (or was) an lpc-826 driven with a a mohgasm linear 478mA driver.

It seemed to work great for about 15 minutes (its snowing here... very good time to be outside with a laser!), but then it shut off immediately. I clicked the switch a few times, nothing... I was about to open it up when it came back on like normal. 30 seconds later, it shut off again. The next time it came back the diode was LED :cryyy:

It looks like the driver shifted before the glue set and I didn't notice it and it shorted against the case.

Am I right in assuming that a short will kill the diode like that?

 

[TheReddish]

I would say it sounds bad but, you should isolate the driver from the host and see if it works and test your driver output. I say this because your diode may just not be getting the power.

 

[Dogs Best Friend]

Yea, I did that. The diode is shot. Good thing it was only a cheap one.

I'm pretty new to building lasers and this is the first one I have killed so far.

I took the lens out and turned it on, it's interesting to see that the light is coming from the top of the semiconductor rather than out the front.

 

[Blord]

Lesson #287 : Wait untill the glue settled.

 

[Ibuprofen200mg]

^ sometimes it's super hard to wait to press that button though....

 

[Dogs Best Friend]

Haha, true. to be fair, I did wait for the epoxy to set before putting it all together, but I hurried through it and didn't notice that the driver was in slight the wrong place so it contacted with the back of the heat sink rather than being in the middle... Won't do that again.

 

[Dogs Best Friend]

It was a cool laser while it lased though... Not super bright, but I was digging the single-modedness of the LPC826. It was about as bright as my little 532nm, and the beam looked almost as good. An ugly beam really gets under my skin... its like a crappy sounding guitar, or an imprecise rifle... It's just no fun!