642 Dual

[mikkojay]

Well, I can breathe now- the diodes are in, Lasorbs attached, and ALIVE!
I snapped a few pics of how I arranged things. I went with a couple of the o-like ebay housings, and I am really glad I did. The Lasorb fits in there nicely. I milled a bracket out of 1/4" angle AL stock, and fitted the side that the housings snug up against with 1/8" black acrylic. The slots will allow height-matching to my tallest (LaserWave 400mw 532- yeah, I know, over-green but this is a beam box). The blue is going to be a CNI 473 that's doing 200mw.
I set the current to the 1 driver at 590ma and ran a 3.9ohm resistor in series with the diodes as perscibed by DrLava in another post. The meter only said 150mw after the cube??, so I think it has room to get bumped up a notch, but I am too tired to get froggy just yet. I'm just happy it is glowing, and even if that's all my "ballpark" meter says, the beam brightness is actually a bit nicer that my pos camera would lead you to believe.
The beam quality is great, and the glass lenses in these housings focused to a perfect tiny spot with absolutely no scatter whatsoever. The LW cube from CTLasers is top notch too. It's after 2:00 and I'm beat- but I have a new dual!
-Mike

[flecom]

congrats

looking good, how much power should the diodes be putting out?

i cant wait for my 640 to come in

[Things]

Nice work!

I believe these diodes are capable of about 150mW each.

[SpyroS]

I'm very interested in the one driver for multiple diodes idea. It was said on another thread that it is not a good idea. How did you get it right? i blew my dual red, didnt even get to see a nice red beam. Great work!

[mccarrot]

Nice setup!

@ spyros: Why try to safe one driver (less then 30 USD) and having the chance to blow 2 diode ( 2 x 640nm = 300 USD).

[dave]

Nice work Mike!

Depending on how hard you want to push the diodes, powers of up to 200mw wouldn't be unheard of.... Probably better to do with TEC chilling tho...

[mccarrot]

......
I set the current to the 1 driver at 590ma and ran a 3.9ohm resistor in series with the diodes as perscibed by DrLava in another post. The meter only said 150mw after the cube??.
-Mike

Have you measured the lasers Before the cube? some PL members have big losses on the LW cube as you could read here: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...?t=5159&page=2

[SpyroS]

I built 2 Stanham drivers, but still can't get it to modulate. And i have a single flexmod that needs fixing, was considering using it in place of the stanham drivers.

[drlava]

I have been using these modules in my diode test rig because the screw-in diode mounting method makes swapping diodes easy. however I have noticed that it also doesn't make as good thermal contact with the diode as a machined press-fit in a block of AL would. The result is a bit less power at the top end as the diode heats up. Consider a little thermal paste where the diode mounts. You should be able to remove the PBS and measure each beam individually to see where your losses are..
Congratulations on a tight build!

[mikkojay]

Hey guys, thanks for the kind replies
I didn't measure before the cube, but it might not be too difficult to try it. That notion did make me curious. I did notice that the amount of light coming through the thru-hole in the particular mount is next to nothing, which first made me assume that the cube was working rather efficiently. I know the Lasorbs might soak up a few ma's, and I am not so sure about the series resistors. I started well under the spec sheet's max current to begin with before these other things, so I am sure I will be visiting the trim pot sometime soon.

The question is... who will be the first to crank the shit out of these $100+ a piece diodes??? Get a couple beers in me and we'll see-

-Mike