Confirmation!! NewWish Lasers ARE Pot Moddable!!!!

Hello all, new here. I have been looking on the forums for a bit. I got my NewWish greenie today that I got off the bay for $36.00 shipped.

I though I would just confirm they ARE pot moddable.

The pot is not visible from the battery end opening so I did not know if it had one at all. So I cut a section the size of the board off the top, and sure enough there it was, the freindly pot.

It is situated at about 3mm from the edge of the switch hole, so now you know you can just drill it.







Power measurement using green LED before mod was measured at about 3.5mW. After the mod, it jumped to an amazing 42mW. However, I do not know exactly how accurate this is. It is also perfectly stable, no low output starts.

I can now see the beam pretty clearly in a room lit with a 60 watt incandescent.

Just though you all would like to know you can get a roughly 40mW greenie for less than $40, you may even be able to squeeze more out of one, mine will go no higher.

Have fun, and be safe.

current draw? and.. let us know as it dims day to day, week to week (if it does for you)

That's a very handsome laser. If you had known exactly where the pot was located, you could have just drilled a small hole right above it.

I did that with one of mine that I took apart and found the pot, only I destroyed the pot completely when the drill broke through the casing (I have a drill press now, which is what I needed in the first place). I had to buy a new pot from digikey and very carefully solder that tiny thing in place. I was quite pleased to find that it worked, and that laser is still my brightest one.

Good work!

Thre has to be a way to open this unit with out cutting or drilling.. has anyone tried to open theirs. its damn hard, but it has to open.

let me know if you can crack it open

thanks

Im a noob at laser modifying and stuff, but is that pot mod within the supported range of the diode? Is it slowly killing the pointer? Because if everything is cool and you can get more than 40mW by simply turning the pot, Im doing it right away! oh also, I would like to know the use cycle of that thing... my greenie is precious to me

That's cool, any chance of posting a picture of the output of the laser? or output of a second laser if you have one, to compare the brightness diff?

If i buy one, I don't think drilling would be a good idea, is there anyway to get in to this laser by cutting around it like the leadlight? and then pulling the modual out?

Dude... Ive just made a huge hole... actually, for other people that want to only have a single hole, just make the hole as close to the button as possible without touching it and youll be right above the pot. btw, how the hell did you get 42mw? Ive maxed it and its maximum 10mw...

well I made the perfect size hole and incresed significantly the beam.,. awsome.. well i like to mess around alot and played for hours, and snapped the POT right off the ciruit board. well I can still use it by shorting the POT leads on the board. no biggie.. The big **** off is that after I did all that and messed it up, I found out how to take out the laser modual its self.. lol. LOL , thats all I can say. you will end of scratching the head of the unit but it shimmies out. its f-ing tough to get out and back in, im going to use a diff casing unit to put it back in...


just thought I would let you all know my findings

Thanks
Frankdux

archangel080 said:

Dude... Ive just made a huge hole... actually, for other people that want to only have a single hole, just make the hole as close to the button as possible without touching it and youll be right above the pot. btw, how the hell did you get 42mw? Ive maxed it and its maximum 10mw...

Click to expand...

Keep in mind he used the LED method which is not exactly accurate, unless you calibrate it with a known output laser. However he did mention this also so no fault on his part either, but I thought I would post it again incase you missed it.

Actually, Im correcting what I said... what I have is probably less than 10mw... since its my first greenie, I have no idea what a 5mw or 10mw looks like... :thinking:
Can anyone walk me through how to get more out of it? All I did right now is make the pot output the max laser intensity.
Please help, I would be very greatful.

some more quick updates on this laser unit... wow I got the entire unit dismanteled. I took the modual apart into 4 pecies. PARDON MY IGNORANCE I DONT KNOW ALL THE TERMINOLOGY.... The cap, pcb with wires running into a green crystal, middle barrell with clear focusing lense, and the out housing win small appature for the cap to screw onto..


I removed the POT and solder 2 points to gether to get the max output, I beleive, correct me if I did that wrong. If I take the focusing lese off, I get a very large beam at first the actual beam flowing out of the unit was visible in the light, now its about 4x brigther than factory setting.. still good, If you put the focusing lens on half way if makes a tiny diff, nothing really worth mentioning. NOW many QUESTION is, what if I put 2 C batteries or a 9v batter on my laser what would the outcome be ??? would it kill my laser ? or would it be safe ??? would it be brighter or just last longer ??? anyone know these answers ???


Thanks
Frankdux:touche:

I dont know much, but I read on greenlasers.co.uk that boosting the voltage isnt the best way to get the best output, not taking into account the fact that the chances of frying the diode are super high (if you dont know what youre doing).

http://www.plans-kits.com/lasers.html

Is the laser that they're showing how to mod, is it this one above? the newwish range?

The laser diode needs a certain voltage to work properly, with some degree of regulated current. Most laser diodes seem to need around 3-3.2v - putting 9v anywhere near it will blow it immediately. Also, the laser diode should have regulated volts/current across it - you can over drive the diode to some degree but even placing 9 volts to the regulator will probably kill that in a short time.

I wonder if you are taking precautions whilst doing this - as an exposed diode / crystal assembly will almost certainly allow high power invisible IR to leak out, which may also allow more IR to emit once the pen is re-assembled. I would be more worried about lower power escaping IR than slightly higher power visible light.

tobjectpascal, It looks like the one in the first picture, on that site.

AN now Im not taking to many precuations, im winging it. lol

pixar said:

The laser diode needs a certain voltage to work properly, with some degree of regulated current. Most laser diodes seem to need around 3-3.2v - putting 9v anywhere near it will blow it immediately. Also, the laser diode should have regulated volts/current across it - you can over drive the diode to some degree but even placing 9 volts to the regulator will probably kill that in a short time.

Click to expand...

You know, that's something I have wondered about when powering the diodes with an external power source. I think that the driver circuitry is designed around a certain input voltage (3V for the typical green pointer), which really has little to do with the diodes' voltage requirement. I suppose I could test one with the power supply starting at 0.0V and a 400mA limit. That would tell me the true operating voltages of the diode, but I'm not sure that even matters (sorry I'm rambling).

Luckily, I have always been able to tightly control both the voltage and max current (current limiting) with an HP power supply that someone let me borrow on "long term loan". I had no idea how imortant it would be to have power controls when it comes to testing laser diodes.You set the voltage with one dial, and then set the max current on the other. This way, if I am not sure how much current a device will hog by itself, I can just start at 0.0 max current and slowly dial it up. It works so beautifully for powering diodes that I have even been considering building my own power supply based on a couple L200 regulators (you need two if you want + and -). If anyone has a chance and is interested, take a look at the designers guide for it:
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/A/N/2/5/AN255.shtml
It's almost like that regulator was made just for powering/testing diodes.

If I had been thinking about what I was doing and set a max current on it when I first tried shorting the pot to the case in one of my leadlights, I wouldn't have blown my second diode.

All of my leadlights (4) draw 320mA. I am not planning on re-engineering the circuitry for more power, in fact I think I am going to adjust all the pots so that they will output 5mW or less. This will make them all safe and legal. (right?)

Hope I didn't stray away from the topic by including that, it just seemed like a good place.

Glad too see some of you found the info usefull.

Current draw stabilizes at 270mA after 30 sec. warmup. Output has not decreased after several ours of ON time. This is on Energizer alkaline AAA's


I am making large 4000mAh Lithium Polymer pack to power it. The cells are 3.7 volts and I have tested the output at 54mW at this voltage which seems to be safe with no signs of potential destruction after about an hour of nearly contiuous output at this voltage.

Again these results were using the LED method. Accuracy is unknown.

Also, my switch is going bad, cant handle almost 300mA, probably rated for 50-100.

I have a butt load of first surface mirrors that bounced is all around the house off of. I will get some pics of this and post em. Looks really cool.


BTW, Arkangel, your laser may not be able to get any brighter. The pumped crystals probably vary greatly in purity, much like silicon CPU dies. Some may be able to get a higher output, some may not. All the manufacturer cares is that they get less than 5mW out of it

Sputnik, did you simply turn the pot to get that much of an output?

And does anyone know if there's other mods possible, like shorting some of the circuit's resistors to give more juice to the diode?

Yes, just a turn of the pot.


Without knowing the specs of the diode it would be hard to "short" anything without a great potential for disaster.

I am going to reverse engineer the drive electronics in the next few days to see what we can do.

Im going to hook it up to a scope tomorrow to see what frequency/pulse width the diode is being driven and see if we can change this.


Does anyone know what wavelength the diode is?

Wow, nice price even if you don't mod it.