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 The following information is from Solarfire:

I did some updates here (not finished yet), added a chart with power measurements for the tested setups. The same diode was
used in the same mount at the same mount temperature (22°C) @ 1070mW for all measurements. It was surprising so far!
I finally got around to testing the 405-G-2 collimators!

I still have to do all the cylinder setups, sorry drlava. Just haven´t got much time these days.

Daves mount was a big  help here, just the fact that the diode can easily be removed or changed. I reverse mounted the diode witch made is easier to measure the raw diode power, you can get real close to the diode aperture.
Thanks Dave! I´ll be getting some more of those!

I also found out that it will be worth TECìng these. A 15mm x 15mm TEC fits nicely on top of Daves mounts. It was noticed during the power tests, that at =>700mW  significant power drop was noticed, after a few minutes of operation, especially when approaching => 1000mW.
Hey Dave how about a 4mm bore direct halfway between diode bore and top of the mount to approximately the center of the mount in depth?

Big surprise in the power tests!  445nm diode beam collimation with Aixiz 405/455 full tread, O-Like 405/445, 405-G-2, mccarrot (Laserextreme) blue, Insaneware and  correction with prism and cylinder lens pairs. I’m looking for an  optimal lensing setup (for my personal needs) where beam dimension at the aperture is <3.5mm and the divergence <1.5mrad. All of these  setups can probably be tweaked a little more but before I get into that the basics have to be given (minimal beam- aberration, artifacts). 

The diodes used for these tests were selected according to having a clean and symmetrical raw emitter pattern with the highest uniformity in illumination. Prisms are from the p1t8bull GB and the cylinders from the drlava GB. Diodes were driven at 230mA and the beam was projected onto or thru a black measuring grid with 1mm increments (except centerlines which have extra 0.5mm increments).

 Insert Aixiz pics here

For the price the results are actually pretty good except for the fact that the beam size at the aperture exceeds 3.5mm on the fast axis. Best results was with the prism pair with a setup time <5 minutes.

Mccarrot collimator (Laserextreme) blue, price 65$ (includes 5.6mm mount 11mm):

 Insert Mccarrot pics here

This collimator was  actually very disappointing at 65$ a shot with a minimum order of 4. Here I expected the ultra collimator, instead it turned out they are absolutely useless for this diode. They would have been perfect as far as aperture beam size is concerned but the far field is catastrophic. Mccarrot are you sure these are the correct collimators you sent, they look slightly different than the ones in the pictures? Only the case and not the lens carrier are brass like in the pictures? You got any suggestions? Can I return these for a refund or the correct lens? Unfortunately I’ve got 2 selected diodes stuck in these with thermal epoxy. And yes the results were the same with both collimators.

I managed to clean up the mccarrot setup. It appears there were some issues with reflections inside the collimator housing. I took the mccarrrot lens and put it in Daves mount, major improvement. See the last picture above! 

O-Like collimator 405/445nm, price 8.20$ (just the collimator):
 
 Insert 0-Like Lens Pics here

Now this turned out to be the biggest bang for the buck all around. I couldn’t believe this one, I redid the tests just to verify that nothing was changed on the initial setup. Highest power, lowest loss, best divergence, cleanest beam, best beam spot, lowest price! Nothing to add here but, thanks  O-Like I’ll take another 10. 

Insaneware collimator 405/445nm, price 20$ (just the collimator):

 Insert Insaneware pics here 
 
This one has pretty good beam properties but highest loss which makes 20$ way too much for this one!

405-G-2 collimator 405/445nm, price 28€ (lens and Module housing):

 Insert 405-g-2 pics here

As expected with a  short FL lens, small beam at the aperture of 3.5mm x 0.8mm but with a higher divergence of 1.5mrad. Excellent low loss of 2% after the collimator and a total of 8.3% after the Prism correction. Needless to say this is the winner under the short FL lenses in price and quality. These short FL lenses will probably have better resultson the beam profil with the still pending cylinder lens setup! I will be using these in my setups with small aperture requirements and the O-Likes for setups which are not so critical with aperture size requirements.

 Insert power chart here

Power chart!  
In general the prism setup is the easiest. I just set the focus of the diode so the beam profile at 11m was about 1m in the fast axis and then rotated the diode until the beam profile was vertically straight. I then refocused the collimator until I had a sharp horizontal line (seems to  be slightly converging since the far field beam was smaller than at the aperture) and dropped the prisms on Zoofs template and viola a little tweak here and there and it fit!
The cylinders are somewhat more time consuming to set up and tend to induce slight aberration into the beam profile. 

Thank you!SolarFire
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