Unknown laser diode ?

[tarquinthrust]

I have had this laser diode for many years i got it out of a working laser printer and i want to power it up. But i don't want to put too much voltage into it and blow it. Any ideas?

 

[Pontiacg5]

Its probably just a red 650nm diode around 5mW, the board does not appear to have any driver so you would have to make one. IMO that diode would not be worth making or buying a driver, its just too weak

 

[tarquinthrust]

the board appears to me to have everything on it that these drivers do im probably wrong
It can be done - Laser driver

@Pontiacg5 thanks for reply

 

[Pontiacg5]

Is the black 4 pinned thingie a plug or a IC? It looks to be a plug to me. The only things I can make out are a ceramic cap, a diode, a POT, and some resistors. The printer probably had a constant current source elsewhere so there would not be one on that board there.

All I can suggest is sketch it out. Follow the traces on the board and write them out in the standard form so you can see exactly what is going on there.

 

[tarquinthrust]

Yea the black thing is a plug
yea your right i reckon it did have a continuous power source the module it is mounted in is huge so i wonder if its more powerful than 5mw

 

[Pontiacg5]

No chances are it is not stronger than 5mW, there is no reason for it to be strong.

Good luck getting it going!

 

[tarquinthrust]

cheers for the info. i probably wont bother now cause its weak
i have ordered a 2 watt cmount 808 anyway and housing

 

[pullbangdead]

Please be careful with your 2W 808nm.

Are you sure you know what you're doing with it?

 

[heruursciences]

Your laser diode is a 30mw 780nm laser diode, the heatsink and mounting are very nice though, also keep that square lens before the polygon- you can use it to collimate multimode laser diodes

 

[tarquinthrust]

@pullbangdead
yea im pretty sure i know what i am doing. i am just not that great with electronics. eg understanding the circuit board in my earlier pic

 

[tarquinthrust]

@heruursciences
cheers i just have to power it somehow i dont have much of the original printer left so im not sure of the imput voltage into the board

 

[tarquinthrust]

haha look what i just found in the shed wile looking for the power supply

 

[Pontiacg5]

You can edit your previous post so you don't have to keep making new posts, just click the edit button in the lower right hand corner of the post you want to edit.

That's too bad about that diode, but it can be used for practice. And if you get a visible diode someday that polygonal mirror on a motor can make a really cool liquid sky effect.

 

[roddenberry]

I believe that this is the laser diode of the Apple LaserWriter II laser module, right?

Like heruursciences said, this is a rather weak diode truly not worthy of any kind of experimentation, but the optics in the module itself are pretty spiffy and worth saving.

Robert

 

[tarquinthrust]

yea i have done the liquid sky effect with a cheap laser pointer once by poking it through the little hole where the diode is located. I used one of those ultrasonic pond fogger to get tho smoke effect.

The diode and mirror module is actual out of a really old memorex telex printer