I made a little antenna aimer using a laser. It is quite nice, it has a big over sized heat sink, a power system capable of handling way more voltage then required, a good design electrical protection system, user power control, robust shielding and good mechanical design that can be water proofed.
I put a fair bit of work into it and used quite a valuable heatsink/mechanical work to attach two linear regulators and a diode.
Well, unfortunatly I damaged the diode, which was chinese, because I twisted the PCB attached to it during removal and destroyed a bond wire (completely unacceptable mechanical design on their part to allow a component lead to rotate freely and tear a fuckin bond wire, every transistor I ever used will sheer right at the mother fucking can interface, but enough of that bullshit).
The big problem for me however, is the fact that the body of the diode is reference to a positive voltage, I forgot about this. While it was not a problem to float my regulators using sillpad and special screws with plastic heads and heat shrink over the threads, I am still faced with the problem of having a heat sink that will be at laser voltage, even if I buy a replacement laser.
Now, without having to do a whole mechanical redesign (I spent too much time on this already), can anyone recommend a laser diode with optics that would fit into my machined hole
This is the laser diode / optics I used:
http://www.dx.com/p/100mw-532nm-green-laser-module-3v-11-9mm-26890Yes, the control electronics and heat sink cost alot more then the shitty diode at this point. But does anyone have a replacement for that part (minus the control electronics and shit mechanical design) that will fit into the same form factor but have a earthed or floating case?
I really like what I did so far, it is tolerant to 80V indefinably with high ESD protection, will run at like 20V in the hot sun, has a big power adjustment knob, good space for high quality batteries or external power source, can be in the rain.
It is meant to attach to microwave directional antennas with narrow (3deg) beamwidth.
I don't want to float the whole thing because of moisture, it would require working with plastics too much (the antenna it will be mounted to is earth referenced) if it is to be capable of surviving in the rain.
And my mechanical design is tight, I can't rebore the hole to a much larger diameter due to the proximity of the linear regulators. maybe I can go like 0.1 inch wider diameter.