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FrozenGate by Avery

You never know whats inside






Soldering a wire to a zinc plated screw is not very secure is it? Why not just solder on a eyelet, and that heat sink sucks, I don't care if something is ugly as long as form follows function, but that's not even going to function well.
 
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Well, eyelets costs something like several fen (100ths of a yuan) so that'd just drive up cost while the solder seems to do the job.

Same thing for the heatsinking kludge: I'd be ashamed to have designed it like that. But if you designed it properly but it turned out not to work that well inside the actual housing, adding the kludge is superior to not doing so. The end result is a product that doesnt cut out due to overtemperature, and customers usually don't care -how- something is achieved as long as it works.

And in all honestly we don't even know if the kludge is that bad of a solution: you'd need to compare it to a 'properly glued on heatsink' that fits inside this host to be able to judge if there really is a problem. Given the overall design i doubt it would matter.
 
Benm said:
If you remove the driver i suggest replacing that kludge wire solution with one of those tiny glue-on heatsinks, provided you can get that thermally greased on 'heatsink wire' off easily.

It's not uncommon to find kludges like this in consumer products. They are bascially a result of a design miscalculation that was noticed late in the testing process.

If i were to venture a guess as to how this came to be: They probably tested the circuit on a lab bench with free air circulation, and it performed just fine. Then they took it into production, but the driver went into thermal shutdown because it was now enclosed in the body of the pointer with restricted air circulation.

Having already produced a large number of these boards adding this wire-heatsink kludge proved to be the cheapest way to remedy that problem they just went for it.

If they ever did a second generation of this circuit you'd probably find that it would have been resolved by a larger pcb heatsink area, or a little heatsink mounted on the device. The problem is you cannot rapidly source tiny heatsinks that would actually fit the enclosure, so they went with this solution that apparently works.
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...Wat? It's a custom build by a member, using an x-drive....nothing production about any of it :thinking:
 
Well, not production indeed :)

But perhaps it worked very well before inserting in all into the host, after which a thermal shutdown problem with the xdrive presented. I'd presonally have chosen to glue on a tiny heatsink, although i don't know this would work any better compared to that wire jumble.

Anyway, the liberal appplication of 'white gunk' is more worrysome to me - the whole circuit seems to by covered in that on both the bottom and top. I suppose this is to prevent accidental contact between pcb contacts and casing, but i don't understand it the reason for it.

You might as well set the whole thing in epoxy, which would likely solve the thermal problem as well without the wire kludge (or at least permanently hide it from prying eyes).
 
Well i have different strips of solid copper taken from old transformers were i work. This copper is primo stuff assorted sizes. i cut them to fit the job and score ribs in them for venting. custom made so to speak. Tried to salvage the driver the best i can now on to the test load.
 

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What the fúck kind of failed abortion mess of wires and thermal epoxy was that?! :barf:
Glad to see you're bringing it out of its misery and giving it a new configuration.
 
Good luck with that - seems like the gunk that sets to a pretty hard solid, epoxy or such. Seems like even the resistors got a bit of side splash there, though that will not have any effect on the circuit.
 
I'm just waiting on the new SXD set to 1.8 mA with ramp up. can't wait to post the resurrection build pics. It was a shame but i got a great diode and host out of to for a great price.
 
Lifetime17 said:
I'm just waiting on the new SXD set to 1.8 mA with ramp up. can't wait to post the resurrection build pics. It was a shame but i got a great diode and host out of to for a great price.
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1.8mA? I think you mean A as in Amp, not milliamp.
 
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Yes crazy I meant that one eye opened in the early morning. I get up around 4am EST I like when folks point out little things your very savvy..

As to red Cowboys reply on the zinc screw in the pill that was also solder tacked to the positive contact board screw along with the negative screw . I cleaned the up nice and they will be mechanically fastened the correct way to the neg and pos contacts.
I will post the resurection build as soon as I get the SXD drivers in. And my 470nm diode and SXD for another build I'm doing.
 
hey i didn't even know who the original builder was. And the person i bought it from came forward on his own to say who it was. Hey I'm not looking to bash some one but that build could have been a lot better. it could have been worst the driver might have took out the diode if i wasn't looking inside the build. But when I'm done rebuilding it it will be 100% better. and i will post the rebuild.
 
Like I said earlier it could have been a first time build, I don't know, but a lot of people come here with no knowledge of electronics or soldering skill, and knowing nothing about lasers or electronics assembly or even how to use a DMM. No need to bash anyone, they have to start somewhere so it's only natural their first builds may be substandard, but they learn over time. Even Laserbeamk may eventually become an expert.

Alan
 
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