Feeler: 9mm diode housing in copper - any interest?

[dave]

Following a brief discussion with Mr. Planters, a copper diode housing looks like a good idea, especially for these 9mm diodes, as they generate a fair bit of heat..

Would there be any interest? Target price would be ~$25AUD per housing

[kitatit]

Hi Dave, I haven't got any 9mm diodes ATM but I'm most definitely interested in your mounts in copper for 5.6mm.

Cheers
Kit

[m0f]

Yes. Though I haven't had any problems with your brass mounts for the 9mm. At the same time I haven't pushed it all that hard (ran out of driver..) I think we need more 3+ amp drivers w/ standby beam suppression more than anything

But either way copper or brass, your mounts are my first choice. Definitely happy to pay any small differences in cost towards anything that improves their performance even more. Would other properties be for the most part the same ? (stability, ease of use, etc)

[polishedball]

Following a brief discussion with Mr. Planters, a copper diode housing looks like a good idea, especially for these 9mm diodes, as they generate a fair bit of heat..

Would there be any interest? Target price would be ~$25AUD per housing

Maybe if we had pbs that worked with blue

[buffo]

Maybe if we had pbs that worked with blue

I tested one of the PBS cubes that Dave sourced, and it worked great with blue. Hit it with 3.3 watts, and found acceptable losses in both transmission and reflection.

Dave:

Would these be copies of your cube-style mounts that you already sell in brass? If so, I would *definitely* like to purchase at least 4 of them for the 9mm blue diodes. (I would swap them out for the brass ones I have in those dual-kits I bought from you a while back, and upgrade from the M140 diodes to the new 9mm blues.)

Price sounds very reasonable.

Adam

[polishedball]

I know was jus being wise butt, as I have been waiting for that GB.

John

I tested one of the PBS cubes that Dave sourced, and it worked great with blue. Hit it with 3.3 watts, and found acceptable losses in both transmission and reflection.

Dave:

Would these be copies of your cube-style mounts that you already sell in brass? If so, I would *definitely* like to purchase at least 4 of them for the 9mm blue diodes. (I would swap them out for the brass ones I have in those dual-kits I bought from you a while back, and upgrade from the M140 diodes to the new 9mm blues.)

Price sounds very reasonable.

Adam

[steve-o]

Yes, definitely interested Dave. The 9mm 445s are killer and your mounts in copper would be awesome. I have read in numerous posts here that copper is extremely hard to machine. Have you found a way around this?

[laserlackey]

Following a brief discussion with Mr. Planters, a copper diode housing looks like a good idea, especially for these 9mm diodes, as they generate a fair bit of heat..

Would there be any interest? Target price would be ~$25AUD per housing

Dave,

Have you experimented with copper housings at all? Jonathan and I have done a fair bit of testing with different alloys of aluminum, copper, and brass, and found that copper actually didn't perform that well over aluminum. It does provide for a bigger heat reservoir, taking a longer time to heat up, but once hot it tended to hold that heat. We tested using an M140 diode since it's a known quantity, and were never able to drive it as hard in copper, getting about 100mW less total power using the same driver and driver settings.

Also, $25AUD a piece? How many of these things are you making to get the price that low?!

PM me if you wouldn't mind. I'm interested in your design and I think you may be interested in some of our data

I think we need more 3+ amp drivers w/ standby beam suppression more than anything

This! A thousand times this!

[planters]

Copper is defiantly harder to machine, but if you are commissioning a bunch from a CNC shop they can dial in the speeds and tooling. That's where some of the cost comes from. It isn't just the copper stock.

Have you experimented with copper housings at all?

I have both for supercooling reds and for HARD driving the 9mm diodes. I default to the aluminum when it matters because of the machining hassle with copper. There are a lot of variables in comparing the thermal performance of these materials in real world applications. If the contact surfaces are less flat in one test rig or the clamping pressures are different this can matter a lot. Without getting too OCD about it, my PM to Dave came from a module I am building with 9mm diodes. When running un-modulated for minuets at 2.5 A the top of each brass diode holder became HOT. This remained after switching from Arctic Silver to indium film. A spectrogram of the output of the diode showed a 2nm red shift which is consistent with a 40C temperature rise of these GaN diodes. I fabricated diode holders from aluminum and the tops of these mounts were warm and the red shift decreased to 1nm @ 2.5A. The wavelength shift is only used to measure of the temperature rise, but there is a substantial decrease in power output with temperature and this is what everyone cares about.

[dave]

Maybe if we had pbs that worked with blue

Last week Chad said he was going to send the PBS to Eric for his evaluation.