Water cooling my 400mw o-like green?

[plexus]

DPSS usually require a certain temp range to operate optimally. this is not necessarily cold. check my review of the O-Like OLNG350 and look at the 15 min warm up graph. you will see after about 7 mins of operation the laser stabilizes and the output is in its highest range. During this time the laser host is warm to the touch. You need to find the optimal operating range of the laser and apply temperature control in that range. This can be accomplished with TEC. A large heatsink can help because it will moderate the temperature changes in the laser components and usually provide longer run times and more stability. This is why I got the OLNG350 over the smaller OL-532-350 (smaller heat sink means less stability, lower average power etc).

 

[Benm]

Water cooling, spray-on or otherwise, is really overkill for these devices. The amount of power you need to dissipate is not that big at all - perhaps in the order of 5 watts for the pump diode and driver combined.

This could be done just fine with ordinary passive heatsinking at a minimal temperature rise, but the laser hosts simply lack the surface area to provide enough cooling to run them at 100% duty.

Closed circuit water cooling just moves heat arond, and would still require ample heatsinking to make it work in the long run. I think the best option is to add passive heatsinking. This could result in something like a star-shaped heatsinking collar around the laser. It seems likely that both the host and the heatsink need to be machined to ensure a tight fit though - not impossible, but you'd need the tools to make it happen.