DIY Laser driver

If you ever wanted to have a powerful laser, not just a pointer anyone can buy for few euros. And at the same time not want or not be able to spend hundreds of dollars for the professional lasers. There is a way to achieve your wish for a very little money.

Nobody from the laser community would tell you that the only thing you need to do is to extract a laser diode from a dvd burner and hook it up with 2 AA batteries. Sure, you can do it. Question is how many times you can before you waste the diode. LD is very fragile electronic component and the only way to get it long and productive life is to build a driver for it. That will supply the exact needed and stable current to the diode.

This picture isn't mine, copied&pasted from laserWiki:)

Probably the most famous person in the laser DIY community is Daedal. He is the creator of the laser driver for dummies. His driver is called DDL(DaeDaL, I guess), or an LM317 circuit, after the most important component in the driver. Pros of this circuit are that it very well does what it supposes to, it's relatively easy to build and also very cheap. The actual components cost about 2€ at most. I don't count solder, soldering iron and a breadboard/veroboard in. Cons on the other hand are that it's a bit bigger to be used in a portable box, and.. it uses a lot of volts(7V for reds,9V for blus). And let me tell you, combining this circuit and a 9V battery isn't going to win any minituarization contest.

This one lacks a potentiometer for easy adjustments.

For little devices powered by the least possible voltage. For example 3-5V. You need a special driver. There are flexdrive boost drivers and RKCSTR drivers.. and there are also mini drivers from China, O-like for example sells theirs really cheap.