Simpledrive (5) issues.

[Bbe]

Forget for a moment about bias pot, set it to the minimum position. At 1.6A your mitsu should fail, 0.8-1A is OK, 1.3A is an extreme kick in the ass for this diode. What you say does not fit into my head. 0.6W at 1.6A for P73? Please explain step by step: connections, how and where are you measuring?

[Finale]

At 1.6A your mitsu should fail, 0.8-1A is OK, 1.3A is an extreme kick in the ass for this diode. What you say does not fit into my head. 0.6W at 1.6A for P73? Please explain step by step: connections, how and where are you measuring?

Hm, I think planters drives these to 1.2W power, however, with very good cooling (which I provide). But I agree, at this max current I shouldn't be getting 600mW, but at least twice as much power from it. The fact that the laser power starts to drop above this current shows this is the absolute maximum, so something obviously wrong just from this experience. That, and also how the housing isn't the slightest bit warm to the touch even though I'm overdriving it is pretty weird.

Adding to the info on the cables I provided to you above, I can repeat what I've already said, which is
1) Driver connected to a LED PSU (40A), set to give 11V (to decrease heat dissipation). Multimeter reading confirms 11V.
2) diode connected to the driver with the connectors on the driver side provided with the driver and soldering on the diode pins with a 22 AWG cable
3) red Lasorb from lasershowparts connected to the diode pins with a similar very short 22 AWG cable. Anode to the "A" pin of the lasorb, cathode to the other.

And more info:
Current again measured by using the measuring pins (above the PSU connector pins). Multimeters show 160 mV. I don't measure the current from the cable that goes from driver to diode as it is already soldered and crimped and I don't want to cut it.
But if you think the pins for reading the current might be wrong I can do that.

[Bbe]

For the simpledrive v2500 it means 1.6A, for simpledrive v5 - 3.2A

Multimeters show 160 mV.

My imagination is not enough to understand what is happening.. If you will make reading on anode break, this at least excludes the version of the incorrect measurement via monitor pins. + need to repeat the experiment without lasorb.

But if you think the pins for reading the current might be wrong I can do that.

[Finale]

I did the tests.

1) The monitor pins are spot on, tested the Amps via an anode break and it shows the same numbers

2) Desoldered the Lasorbs, no difference.

3) Set the output voltage from the PSU from 11 back to 12. Didn't expect any difference but tried just in case. As expected it made no difference.

4) Also replaced the power cables of the blue diode with higher AWG.

Here are the results for the P73 red diode, NUGM01T green diode and NUBM07E diodes currently. Red and green use the 3A simpledrive, the blue one uses the 5A version.

red - 1.6A, 2.66V, 640mW (should be around 1.2W)
green - 2A, 4.9V, 920mW (should be around 1.2W)
blue - 4A, 4.76V, 2.65W (should be around 4.8W)

All these were driven close to their peak output before the dropoff starts. At no point were they higher at lower Amps than the numbers above so not like I was decreasing their power output by overdriving too much.

I'm so clueless right now. Even my eyes can see that the red is not outputting around 1.2W and this being a power meter issue since I have a 600mW red DPSS for comparison, the diode is not the slightest bit bright.

[tvron]

Hello Finale:
I have been following this thread with much interest as I am waiting for my V5 smartdrive from x-wossee as well. It will replace the TTL driver board on the 5.5 watt blue laser from banggood. I Hope you are able to get this sorted out soon. I do wonder although why you don't feel the diode is not bad? , in my research on ESD and Lasorb there video demo show one zap of ESD and the diode is have power out and two or three and it's gone.

[Bbe]

I am also looking forward to resolving the issue, but I am powerless to help something in this case

The driver provides the required operating current, and that's all it needs to do. The reasons why you do not get the expected optical power I posted here Now we can exclude lasorbs from this list.

red - 1.6A, 2.66V, 640mW (should be around 1.2W)
green - 2A, 4.9V, 920mW (should be around 1.2W)
blue - 4A, 4.76V, 2.65W (should be around 4.8W)

[Finale]

I also don't think the drivers are faulty, as I mentioned in my very first post ("I know the drivers are good quality, but something ain't right here") but I agree the topic title should have been different such as "issues with setting up Simpledrive", not "simpledrive issues". I can't change the topic title. And to be honest I don't think the driver being the thing to blame is out of the question just yet either for few reasons:

The driver provides the required operating current, and that's all it needs to do.

1) Well it's an anlogue driver so it has to also properly take an input signal and provide modulation.
So a question: what if an improper modulation signal or improperly handling of the modulation signal by the driver (I think less likely) causes the average power over time to be less than it would be when constantly in on (5V) state? Would that even affect current/voltage reading from an ordinary multimeter?

2) 6 diodes being faulty all at the same time is very unlikely (2 red, 2 green, 2 blue). These have had lasorbs on them from the very start, although greens and blues aren't that fragile. The lasorbs are from lasershowparts, he knows his stuff, mismatch is unlikely. But even if it was the case, I just mentioned that I unsoldered the lasorbs to see if I would get a different result.
And when an ESD damage does occur, I haven't ever experienced it only cutting the laser power by 20-50% but much much more to a point when it is useless.

3) I have tried several g2 and 3element glass lenses.

4) Again, Laserbee shows the correct power output from my DPSS modules as it did before. And again, if red was actualy outputting more than 600mW, and even above 1W I think I would feel something from such focused beam on my palm.

But again, I agree the topic title is bad. I wouldn't be hesitant to buy from you again and I don't think neither should anyone else. I just can't change the topic title and don't want to spam and start a new thread talking about the same issue.

[catalanjo]

@ "So a question: what if an improper modulation signal or improperly handling of the modulation signal by the driver (I think less likely) causes the average power over time to be less than it would be when constantly in on (5V) state? Would that even affect current/voltage reading from an ordinary multimeter?"

YES!

I find it odd that you can consider this, but somehow prefer to ignore the far larger probability that this same effect can be caused by the 40A LED PSU running at low current. Could you not just nip out and knobble the battery out of your (or someone else's) car to get a nice clean DC supply, thereby eliminating (if you get same as usual results) the most likely cause for these readings?
I feel that the lack of heat in the diodes and drivers would certainly point in that direction, as per my earliest post.

If the DC supply looks like the Alps then the driver will be chopping off the peaks OK, but has no way to fill in the valleys.
Also large current chopped supplies don't really work well at low currents depending on their design style.
Have you got any way of shunting off say 20amps into a different load whilst running your tests?
This might give the PSU a fighting chance of giving a level-ish DC output.

Interesting to hear your results if you try either of these options.
Cheers

[Finale]

Ah, so that is what you meant by "AC wobble". Fair enough, I'll test both. Good that there is something to check for issues.
Hope it is a signal issue rather than PSU issue though, those PSUs aren't cheap.

PS. Any chance a capacitor before the driver would smooth the PSU spikes if there are any?

[Bbe]

If the averaged power goes down, then the average current also goes down. 99% of regular multimeters show the average value of the current (up to several tens of kHz), for example at 50% PWM you will read 2 amps instead of 4

So a question: what if an improper modulation signal or improperly handling of the modulation signal by the driver (I think less likely) causes the average power over time to be less than it would be when constantly in on (5V) state? Would that even affect current/voltage reading from an ordinary multimeter?

Just check the power supply voltage in AC mode. If this is not OK, you will immediately see ripple/spike issues

I find it odd that you can consider this, but somehow prefer to ignore the far larger probability that this same effect can be caused by the 40A LED PSU running at low current. Could you not just nip out and knobble the battery out of your (or someone else's) car to get a nice clean DC supply, thereby eliminating (if you get same as usual results) the most likely cause for these readings?