I bought two diodes from the group buy and I decided to do something with them today. I put one in an old rectangular brass axiz module that I had first to see what the beam quality is. Let me tell you, that module has the best focus of anything. The line was very clear at 30 ft. Later I put the diodes in some normal Aixiz blanks and the output was no where near as clear.
Anyway, next I removed it from the brass module and pressed it into a blank. I ruined the first one doing. It was good I bought two. The next I took more care and pressed it in correctly. Like I said, the beam is not as good in these but it looks OK. First I used a regular plastic lens with the little hole. THen I went with a 3 element glass lens. The 3 element glass lens was slightly better than the plastic lens but nowhere near as good as what i was getting out of the brass module. In the future, I will use the brass module but I need to do some stuff to make it work first.
After than an aligning I did something I never thought I would ever be doing; I lowered the power of my blue to match the power of my green. I also put a new fresh red LOC diode in my red module since the other was dieing. In about 4 hrs, when it gets darker, there will be some kick ass beam shows going on in my living room!
As far as the blue goes, I checked it out and the beam isn't perfect but for my home use I don't even notice that it isn't a perfect circle. I'm not going to bother with fancy optics.
So, who wants my crappy Lasever 473nm module? LOL.