I actually have one of these diodes which I tested about a year ago, the results are summarized below:
1. They are power hogs, it takes ~500ma to get the 250mw output at 25C (measured without any lens, strait into the scientech 362)
2. They are very sensitive to temperature, running at 35c gives almost 1/2 power. A tec would be a must for any real application.
3. The beam, while not great, is not terrible. Using one of the triple lens collimators that Junktronix sells I was able to get a beam that measured .06in x 0.62in at 10m from a beam 0.045" by 0.2" out of the collimator. I have not tried using a prism set up with them, but they should match quite nicely with the new 445nm blues.
The reason they didn't catch on last year is that people were spoiled with the round beams associated with dpss, and after seeing beam specs like there wasn't much interest. Amazing how times change
Attached is a picture of the beam at 10m, ~90% of the power is in the central line, but my camera was saturated even with the laser running just above threshold (the background is a white wall under sunlight!) so the overspray shows up more than it should.
