Drive currents for 9mm 445 and Mitsu P73

[polishedball]

Thanks PB, that was my next question (getting back on topic ) Who's driving the P73 at what current at an ambient temp of about 70°F/21°C ? 1A? 1.1A? 1.2A ?
-edit- .. just saw Norty's post .. ^ yeah, that too ..

At air temp, I like them at 900ma.

I run a quad and with trimming the wings completely off from every side for a nice spot .5 x .5 inch with no halo or wings at 55' I get 2.6W, now if I remove the spatial filter and measure it with the wings and junk it is 4.4W. Note temp sensors thermal epoxied and drilled into hosts.

[polishedball]

I put a m140 and osram 1.4w side by side and couldn't tell the difference in color or brightness. The osram did have a smaller raw divergence.

Very similar results with the newer 1.6W Osram.

[norty303]

Woody built me a couple of combined RB modules last year or so and the P73 are set for 800mA and giving ~650mW. Passively cooled. I was just wondering if there was a little more worth squeezing from them without sacrificing too much reliability. I reckon going to 1100mA should give a useful 200mW increase but I wonder what others experiences are with them.

[steve-o]

I've recently powered up a P73 @ 1Amp several times now and no COD so I'm figuring maybe some wiggle room in there ..
Got ~ 900mW output (after Dave's 2mm lens w/ no correction optics)

[buffo]

a P73 can be driven at 1A for an output of about 900mW .

Hey Steve-o...

In my experience, without a TEC the P73 will overheat at 1 amp without proper cooling. (In fact, it will overheat at much less than that.)

If you can keep the diode at room temperature, it will be fine, but that's going to require some very aggressive forced-air cooling or a TEC. Just sticking it in a mount with a passive heat sink won't work.

We killed two P73's at Caribb-LEM last year by running them at 750 ma while mounted in those brass "cube-mounts" that Dave over at Lasershowparts.com sells. (They were mounted to an aluminum baseplate, of course.)

I think your best bet is to put a small TEC under the mount and cool it to around 20 degrees C.

Adam

[polishedball]

Hey Steve-o...

In my experience, without a TEC the P73 will overheat at 1 amp without proper cooling. (In fact, it will overheat at much less than that.)

If you can keep the diode at room temperature, it will be fine, but that's going to require some very aggressive forced-air cooling or a TEC. Just sticking it in a mount with a passive heat sink won't work.

We killed two P73's at Caribb-LEM last year by running them at 750 ma while mounted in those brass "cube-mounts" that Dave over at Lasershowparts.com sells. (They were mounted to an aluminum baseplate, of course.)

I think your best bet is to put a small TEC under the mount and cool it to around 20 degrees C.

Adam

Agree 100%. The power meter will show you the same thing. Turn it up to 1A and watch how fast power drops over time as the diode heats.

[steve-o]

Thanks for the info Adam & PB. I have a P73 mounted in copper attached to an aluminum mount. I may grab a heatsink and do an exper-mint or 2 I'll post the results..

-Edit-
What I actually meant to convey in post #24 was that on the application of 1 Amp to the device, there was no immediate catastrophic optical damage. That means that the diode cavity/mirrors can handle the power. Thermal management, on the other hand, is quite the different issue, and will require (as you stated above) some very aggressive active cooling.