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Trying to work out correct current for driver...






An M140 diode has a forward voltage ~4.5 volts. At 1.8 amps it consumes 8.1 watts of power to give 2 watts of optical power out. That means 6 watts is dissipated as heat for just 2 watts of optical power out. The driver also consumes power and much of that is wasted as heat. Heat is a real part of laser diodes and the reason they need substantial heat sinking to keep them from thermal runaway and failure.

I don't believe the astral buck driver is still available. Oh, I see Barnett has some still for sale. Pradipta, the engineer who developed and built these drivers, is not around much lately.
 
paul1598419 said:
An M140 diode has a forward voltage ~4.5 volts. At 1.8 amps it consumes 8.1 watts of power to give 2 watts of optical power out. That means 6 watts is dissipated as heat for just 2 watts of optical power out. The driver also consumes power and much of that is wasted as heat. Heat is a real part of laser diodes and the reason they need substantial heat sinking to keep them from thermal runaway and failure.

I don't believe the astral buck driver is still available. Oh, I see Barnett has some still for sale. Pradipta, the engineer who developed and built these drivers, is not around much lately.
Click to expand...
OK, sweet, so at least I know the astral driver is OK.
There were some other buck drivers I had seen from a US seller but not showing any more on ebay.
 
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