Hi,

More playing with my chinese laser I found i have an iffy pot on the back. My unit has three pots for RGB to adjust the intensity and thus I presume, tune for a good colour balance.

Now as I wanted mainly power not perfect colour, i figured i would just remove these pots as they are prone to being knocked off anyway

It seemed they are configured as a potential divider, with the signal for laser coming in to one end, the other tied to ground and the wiper tied to laser driver itself. So i figured i could just bypass and send the signal straight to laser, but not so and this results in all kind of no output.

Am i thinking that the laser needs a current control, and this is not simply a potential divider to control intensity as i thought?

I am still new to all this, hence the cheap laser, but a good learning curve.