SO, I'm a huge idiot.

[GooeyGus]

Well... I was having fun with some spectrum tubes and my little BD-10A hand-held oudin coil, and to my dismay, I didn't even see my 250mW 473nm laser sitting in very close proximity to what I was 'zapping'.

I only noticed it was there when I saw a nice big spark jump right over to it. Uggh... My first thought was "ok... diode is dead for sure."

Well, I turned it on and to my suprise the laser came right on, with good power. I thought I was out of the woods.

Well, after about 5 minutes the power was very low, maybe 20-50mW or so.

The fact that the laser comes on with good power and then fades leads me to believe that I fried some of the electronics that controls one of the TECs.

This seems like it's going to be a case of "chase down the bad electronics', but can anyone point me in the right direction at all?

If worse comes to worse I'll just build my own driver for this thing, but I would really not want to have to do that.

I almost would have preferred a dead diode. At least then I know the problem and I know exactly how to fix it. This is going to be a bit more of a wild goose chase.

[cat]

No, this may be a huge wake-up call for those who really don't pay attention to everything around them when they are playing...............Good luck getting it fixed...........Cat

[mixedgas]

Huge idiot is the guy at LPF who describes getting a retinal burn, is not sure if its a retinal burn, and does HIMSELF another retinal burn.

You just had a bad day in the lab.

When you can beat a 7,000$ mistake with a piece of custom glass, call me and I'll commisurate with you.

Tell then cheer up, you didn't pop a crystal or loose alignment along the rotational axis.



Steve

[GooeyGus]

Huge idiot is the guy at LPF who describes getting a retinal burn, is not sure if its a retinal burn, and does HIMSELF another retinal burn.

You just had a bad day in the lab.

When you can beat a 7,000$ mistake with a piece of custom glass, call me and I'll commisurate with you.

Tell then cheer up, you didn't pop a crystal or loose alignment along the rotational axis.



Steve

What's REALLY stupid are the kids that are telling people to use 808nm goggles with their GREEN laser pointers, rather than 532nm goggles. [sarcasm]The tiny amount of residual IR is obviously more dangerous than the well-collimated green beam coming out[/sarcasm]

The rationale is "you can see the green... you never know when you are being hit by the IR" haha... infrared light has such a huge stigma over there.... The funny part is that they don't worry about playing with 2W 808nm hand-helds, which are collimated, but they freak out about a tiny bit of residual pump light from a green pointer. Again, the rationale is "with an all-IR laser, you know that the IR is there, with green lasers you never know!"

Sorry for the off-topic rant... I just get a good laugh when I read all that stuff.

[heroic]

The fact that the laser comes on with good power and then fades leads me to believe that I fried some of the electronics that controls one of the TECs.

I'd suggest looking at the current going to said TECs to see if they're being driven at all, if the drive is changing (it should change as the temperature of the relevant thermistor changes), or is just stuck on or not working at all. If it's stuck then you've probably killed either the amplifier that compares the set point to the thermistor reading or the transistor that turns the signal from said amplifier into drive for the TEC.

[MechEng3]

Give me a PM if you can't get it sorted. Sorry to hear of this....we can repair it...hopefully the diode didn't get the shock of it's life.