blown laser question

[ZeroPoint]

so my friend and i were working on my brakes in his garage over a couple beers and i had a 150mW laser module with me that i was going to be fitting into a pointer. i was letting him play around with it and he decided to connect it to an 18V cordless drill battery (and for some reason i didnt stop him). needless to say, the laser no longer works. its really not a big deal since it was cheap anyway, plus now i got to take it apart and see how the diodes and drivers are pressed together. but my question is, is it more likely that he fried the driver or the diode? also, it has been my plan to buy the pieces to make a 1W 445 module and i am aware that the diodes need to be pressed into the housing, but after taking it apart i am curious how one goes about pressing such a small diode into the module housing. is there a special tool that aids in this, or is it just a very delicate process with basic tools?

[LaNeK779]

i made myself a really basic tool for press fitting laser diodes

got a 6mm thick round aluminium bar
cut a short length of it (around 30 mm)
then drilled a 3mm hole right in the middle, going deep around 20mm
then filled the thing until it dropped to around 5,5mm of thickness on the outer side (easy way to file it down is to insert it in your drill like an ordinary drill bit and then operate the drill bit against a file for metal until you reach the required thickness. this won't take more than a couple of minutes)

sorry, no pics of it yet, maybe at some undefined time in the future, hope the explanation makes sense

you could also use the longer part of an empty aixiz housing to press fit the diode

[Vidal Wolf]

I have a number of presses at work that I can use,I just punched out the red diode & *carefully* pressed in the 445 into the old red housing. Just be sure to take your time ,make sure that the 445 diode can is *level* with the old housing when you press it in,and *use anti static* straps to help reduce any chance of ESD induced damage.
I have mounted 4 445 diodes in former red housings this way. I even used the same optics with little loss.
Good luck!

[ZeroPoint]

thanks, to both of you. i will wait until i get the parts and then take a closer look at them. i will have to look into the anti-static straps as im not familiar with them. if worse comes to worse there is a laser shop/warehouse just up the street from me. im sure they can give me a hand with it. thanks again