OK, this is scary...

[sraun]

jonsinger is looking for broken Blu-Ray devices. He'll take 'run over by a car' broken!

Why do I find this scary? Maybe it's the thought of 'what is Singer going to do with lots of high-frequency visible light LED lasers?'?

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Blu-ray mechanisms are available on eBay for $45. I've thought about picking one up to make a hand-held blue laser, but then thought "I have enough useless crap already."

Look for part KEM-400AAA

http://www.instructables.com/id/Blu-Ray-Laser-Phaser!

[sraun]

He knows that - but after having two of them go 'pfft' on him, he has decided that ~$50 per shot is not economically sustainable. This leads me to worry about just how many he wants/ needs.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I bet he's actually doing something like following the instructions in that article I linked to. Using something like a resistor to regulate current.

You really must use a constant-current supply to run a laser diode. If you don't, you'll fry it. If you use the proper supply, it should run for thousands of hours.

[sraun]

Actually, from his write-up, he's finding them to be very sensitive in the circuit construction phase - he's lost them both to construction problems/errors.

[gomeza.livejournal.com]

Oh come now, who DOESN'T want a blue laser diode? And i suspect that the reason one needs "lots" is that they are notoriously easy to "blow up". I'd like one too, but can no longer think about hobbies.