Allthat : yes I'll talk to David of course... I'm sure it's not a ESD problem, I take a lot of care to this when working with my lasers, I'm always connected to ground.
Buffo : yes it's the smaller design. If the failures happens more often with the small design, maybe the cause can be an internal temperature problem (which we can not sense by touching the unit). The TEC is certainly less powerful than in the older one. It can be a problem when you blank the laser for a long time and switch on again fastly to full power...
Yes power supply have to avoid peak voltage/current on modulation for example. Germans on Laserfreak forums have measured this (they have a lot of defective green/blue lasever among their members) :
Type : 200mW green Lasever
Black curve : modulation signal
Green curve : pump diode current
Note that there's a current peak at every rising edge, at 100Hz modulation...
And of course, I didn't disconnected the laser head from the power supply when running
Now I'm thinking, when turning off the laser, the TEC will not be powered any more, and its hot side will quickly overload its cold side, so maybe overheating the diode... Is it possible?