Woo tiny blue-ray complete!

[Timbojames]

wickedlasers is actually selling blu-ray lasers at 405nm already, just don't look at the price they are asking

 

[Murudai]

You should have no trouble at all moving a laser like that. It is quite unusual to find such a small blue laser. The trouble is deciding how much money all of your labor was worth. If you price it at your professional level, no one will be able to afford your product. If you price your labor at the average skill level required for this type of work, you might be short changing yourself. And that is all I can offer. Commercial blues are costing hundreds and are not even being produced in the 405nm range that I have seen. That inflates the value of your product in the wider population of not so knowledgeable folks. Oops. Looks like kaidomain.com has a 20mw blu-ray for about $700.

Well, congrats on a great looking little build. And good luck managing your new habit.

JeffP

Don't get confused. There are blue lasers, and then there are blu-ray lasers. They are completely different

Blue is insanely hard to produce, you will never find a DIY blue laser. They also cost a lot of money.

Blu-ray you will see heaps of DIY for, since they are easy to make (compared to a blue). The ONLY commercial blu-ray I've seen is from Wicked Lasers, and the price for that is insane.

 

[clajef]

Murudai attempted to clarify for me:
>Don't get confused. There are blue lasers, and then there are blu-ray lasers. They are completely different.

No problem on my side, Muru. Now, kaidomain might be cornfused - I have no way of telling, since they do not list the frequency in the specs. But they seem to be calling it a blu-ray.
http://www.kaidomain.com/WEBUI/ProductDetail.aspx?TranID=4624 KD 20mw Blu-ray Laser Pen KD#: SKU4624

JeffP

 

[fibrizo]

well I haven't found Kaidomain's descriptions to be the, well most descriptive...

 

[fibrizo]

Finally I can post links! Here's some pics of the innards of the light. I replaced the buck (black thing) with the sanded lavadrive. then I unsoldered the led and dremeled a hole in the top circuit board and set the diode on it and passed the pins through the board and soldered wires to them to the driver... screwed the whole assembly down and it fits just like original light did.

http://www.cones-stuff.co.uk/Jil Lite CR2 1_3W UP.htm

 

[flogged]

A few odd questions. When I focus the beam down, I can smoke/melt black plastics... but over all the beam appears dim. I assume it's just because it's near ultraviolet. I can't even see the beam in a dark room. Should I turn up the power? I assume cause it can burn black plastic when focused down, it's putting out decent power. It does have an 803 diode in it. I have no way of gauging the power though.

Also I notice I cannot focus my eyes on the dot when across the room. it always appears blurry until I get closer (I leave the laser where it is and walk up to the dot) strange effect. anyone else notice?

The beam on mine is not visible in good light. In good light the spot doesn't look much brighter than a 10mW red laser. However, when my eyes are dark adapted I find the beam to be quite visible. Much more so than my 125mW red laser. I find these violet lasers much more impressive in the dark. However my eyes need to be dark adapted to see the beam - I can't just switch the light off and expect to see it.

I've got the same problem focusing on the spot. I can only focus on it well when I'm close to it. As drlava mentioned this frequency (405nm) is not one the eye can focus on well.

 

[fibrizo]

Since I have 2 more diodes and drivers in the mail... I started looking for hosts... I think CR2 is too small to easily work with... (plus I have some LiFePo4 CR123s) so I picked these up from DX

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2110

I know it's cheesy but I wanted a blue host lol... for blu-ray...

BTW... I was soooo tempted to try to put one in a pig light.

 

[heruursciences]

I built a 70mw single AAA powered unit in a dorcy light

 

[iccy]

nice work!

I think my next project will be a diy blu-ray

 

[thejunkmonger]

Get ready to recharge that battery often. I'm using a PHR-803t diode paired with the lava drive in a 1xCR123A body running at 95ma. I only get about 10 minutes of on-time before I hit the 2.5v cut off and the diode starts blinking. Not a big deal, but it sucks down batteries fast!  

Noooooo and mine will run on a cr2 i'll probably get 2 minute runtime. ARGGGG my next one will be bigger.

Sweet mini build there, I like the fact you kept everything inside.

 

[fibrizo]

Well good news so far... Battery life does not seem to be 2 mins. I turned it up a bit... prolly about 115mw. With intermittent use, of 30seconds -1 min at a time, I have yet to drain 1 cr2 battery, and I've prolly gotten at least 10-15mins. I guess if you don't continuously run it, it does better?

 

[rkcstr]

Nice to see another member in the medical field... well, you're a little farther along than I am, lol.  Just finished my first year, MS1.

But, as far as smaller goes, since you're using DrLava's driver solely as a boost circuit (from 1 lithium to ~5V), you could probably interest another member on here to make a boost-only driver that's even smaller since it requires less parts.  I know woop made a pretty small one, if you check around the Experiments & Modifications forum, you can find it.

I could probably shrink my driver using a smaller chip package and less components to be small enough, but you'd still have the high voltage requirement.  I did a boost circuit before that would run off 1 lithium (down to about 2V, I think) and could probably be made small enough, but it's only voltage regulating with a limiting resistor and not very ideal  :-/

 

[fibrizo]

Welcome the the profession Enjoy your first 2 years. It's the last time you'll have "vacation" for a long time I'm not that much further. Gonna Be R3 in 10 days...

Where are you at btw, if you don't mind me asking?

And while I'd love to make things smaller, I realize I just don't have the time to spend on this. When you get to MS3 and up you'll find out about the "80 hour" work weeks.

Maybe I could get you to help me build and mod for a recommendation letter lol j/k. Feel free to ask any questions though.

Right now I have 2 drives and 2 more lava boards waiting for me to take a crack... I just need hosts. I do like the boost, because I have a ton of CR123 and LiFePO4 CR123s... and I'd rather not  buy even more batteries

A quick question for people. I noticed the axis lens does not collamate the beam into a tiny dot... it looks more like a small spot... I know I can focus it into a tiny dot at short ranges but when lookin at about 20+ feet, I have a dot about 0.5cm in diameter (basically the size of the apeture of the lens) Is this normal?