Are FlexMod P3's still available or is there an equivalent that is ready to ship?

[norty303]

Steve, if your design is that good and 'kitable', why not get a load of PCB's made up and sell them with instructions so people can 'roll their own'?
As you say, its hard to monetise the design, but surely it can be of use to people AND still make some sort of return for you, rather than just be 'lost'.

Some folks on the Elite: Dangerous forum have desinged a DIY headtracker which uses Arduino and they're selling the custom junction boards to make putting the things together easier.

[mixedgas]

Because the Eastern Empire would clone it and sell it for five bucks. The dudes at the other forum would clone it at a loss just to have it. If they can sell it, I should be able to do so to. But I can't monetize it under 1000 pieces. I'm betting the cloned and forked board files would be all over the net within 48 hours of the first deliveries of raw boards and a schematic.

I'd like to have a 1000$ Pangolin upgrade to the QM2000 Ethernet box so I can do shows with the laptop.. Stuff like that needs to be paid for. So I need to make some sort of profit.

Lets see how X-Laser does with their board. They have support staff, and other products, thus they can cover their overhead and sunk costs.

Steve

[steve-o]

Steve, maybe potting it or sanding the numbers off of the chips would keep the theft down.. I would say patent it, but we all know that doesn't work anymore

[Photonbeam]

Steve, maybe potting it or sanding the numbers off of the chips would keep the theft down.. I would say patent it, but we all know that doesn't work anymore

Or use your own 20 pin, Ball Grid Array, custom programmed, mixed signal chip in the design and sell kits. How hard would it be for the Eastern Empire to reverse engineer and clone the chip?

[mixedgas]

There is nothing Brilliant in the design, its a current limiter followed by a voltage controlled current source. How I do the startup is not particularly unique, either. It does not use anything exotic nor does it need a microprocessor. Once set at the factory for a given range of diode current, you can't overdrive the diode.

Most people here would gripe as it can't run off 5V, you need 12V or so.

Since the need for high side drivers has been effectively ended by isolated diodes, its cheap, too.

Steve

[mixedgas]

Quote:
Or use your own 20 pin, Ball Grid Array, custom programmed, mixed signal chip in the design and sell kits. How hard would it be for the Eastern Empire to reverse engineer and clone the chip?
EndQuote.

They, over there, have not done it in what? 5 years... Lets skip the talk on the flexmod cloning. Andrew is or was a close friend, he never calls me anymore so I don't know either way. Granted he is on the other side of the continent, Now. I' not too keen on developing a rep for copying, it spurns new development.

One of the reasons he stopped communicating is the probably, the whole correction optics cloning thing.
He made up a huge number of sets of correction optics and probably got stuck with them.

Flexmod is highly optimized, and is very compact. My design is anything but compact. On the other hand you can connect it up backwards and it lives. You could hook +24 to the modulation input and it is designed to survive. Its also repairable.

Some things would be similar, for example Andew uses the only cost effective .1 ohm high wattage, through hole, sense resistor on the market. I'm not going to bother with added gold plated through holes, super mini trim pots, and some of the other things that make the Flexmod a very professional mechanical layout.

I'd take a serious review hit on the size of my design, at least from "Hobbyists". It does need large heatsinking. On the other hand, years of field work has taught me that small, un-connectorized boards are a real PITA on tour. As for the heatsinking, I'm well aware of Arhenius' law, so I like my designs to run cool.

I prefer to make boards repairable, you keep a spare and you swap it in while you fix the old one. After all, the biggest gripe here is the wait time for new units. But to make a profit on a smaller volume, that drives up cost. Lets face it, in the PL/LPF market, cost is a perceived factor on the part of end users. I'd counter that with, "You get what you pay for", which corresponds to a axiom in Econ Class 101, "You can only charge what the market will bear."

Steve

[Bradfo69]

I got sick and tired of it and went with a real company instead of a hobbyist.

This to me seems like a good solution but, the question I have is, who is a real company that sells a laser diode driver?

I've never been able to understand the problem of a source for laser drivers. I understand the issue is they're too inexpensive to make profitably and who wants to go through the work to only make a couple dollars per driver. But, it it really "that" hard for the myriad of electronics guru's on here to make one? I know very little really about electronics so, I have no expertise to back anything up. The badpips, DrLava's, Dave's source, BBE and others of the world have attempted it and, X-Laser is of course working on what's supposed to be the "be all end all" solution where stock and delivery issues finally disappear but, it's been a long road from what I understand. Is a driver for a diode laser really that difficult to design and produce?

It just seems everyone gets all excited over the Flexmod and clamors on top of each other to buy these rare $35 parts when they've been available. I'd just as soon be able to hop online, spend $65 or $75 and get one when I need it. Or maybe that's just hobbiest pricing. What's a laser driver from a "real company" as referenced by edison, actually cost?

[mixedgas]

Here ya go Brad, granted these guys make a industrial grade product. In a lab situation, I would not bat an eye at these prices.
Granted these have softstart, protection circuits out the Yin-Yang etc...


Lets look at a driver for a 2.2 Amp blue.
http://www.teamwavelength.com/produc...ct.php?part=25

This still needs a board added, good heatsinking, and customer selected external parts to select its "personality":

http://www.teamwavelength.com/produc...t.php?part=176

Contrast that to 35$ for a Flexmod.

Now when Wavelength says 2.2, that driver will not go above 2.2, which would anger the "overdriving" crowd here into bad reviews. People on PL and LPF push their diodes into the low life, high current region and live with the failures. I can't do that in a commercial/lab environment. I have a projector on the bench where a client is begging me for overdrive, right now. I keep saying NO.

I have one of the above on my bench. Maybe some day I'll get to hooking it up.

Andrew's drivers are made in large batch one meter by one meter sheets in a factory where there is no EPA. They are then pre=adjusted in some sort of automated test fixture that verifies each one as working. That is just bloody expensive in initial costs. I used to listen to him gripe about his initial setup costs. But that has paid off..


Steve

[Bradfo69]

Ok, I understand for the hobby market when comparing $35 to $369. That makes sense.

Is the MPL2500 what one would expect to find in a these crazy expensive high end projectors from say, LSDI or RGBLasersystems though? Or is there something in the middle range? (I realize they're not using a hobbyiest driver like a flexmod, of course.)

[lasermaster1977]

Maybe it is just me, but having been in the laser show business, the only reasonable and practical way to pay for equipment upgrades is to "do the shows". They are, or at least used to be, the highly marked-up product that netted the real profits. Paying for equipment upgrades selling hobbyist-style LD drivers (80mA - 5A) would seem to be a counter productive strategy to accomplish upgrades. And believe me I understand the temptation and logic to want to do so (been there done that). It is the one inexpensive piece (or should be) that makes up the larger equipment/software investment puzzle. I mean, crimminy, compare this to $10-30K gas ion lasers that included PSU's and $1,500 AOM's for single wavelength beam modulation.

I would think I'm not the only one who has scoured the Internet searching for tid-bits on LD drivers, and in a few hours I found a hoard of very simple, very versatile, soundly designed and cheap, analog or TTL modulation driven drivers suitable for hobbyists and the fledgling wanna-be's. This stuff doesn't have to be expensive in the 80mA to 5A LD current range. Adding TEC steps up the price point a bit more. I am fortunate to be able to understand the electronics and electronic components behind it all. It is bewildering to me (but not surprising) that someone would come up with an LD driver using PGA technology. Kind a sweet, but seems like overkill. But hey, I've only been out of contact with what has evolved in this amazingly fun technology for a bit over 25 years, so forgive me if I'm off base, because I usually am.