Thank you so much,
We bought the serice manual, it has all the schematic diagrams (almost
50 pages) except the laser unit :-(
However I found out that the copiers laser has something between 5 to
25 mW optic power, most probably single mode and wavelength around 800
nm. Panasonic seels the whole unit ... and they know less than me
about inside that unit.
Do you have any idea how to find out the name of those lasers when
nothing is printed on them and Panasonic people are not so much
knowledgeable inside that unit ?
regards,
Dario
One way is to post in alt.lasers as you'll probably find someone there who
has serviced them before. I think you're right about single mode, at that
power range, and the wavelength might not be critical. If you can look
closely at the front of one, see if it looks like a simple 0.3 mm thick
window with a tiny chip behind it, or if there is any kind of microlens or
other optic as part of the canned diode assembly. The more detail you can
give of anything like that, the better, and other detail of the optics
path might help too, what sort of optics, etc... I think you'll be ok with
a simple and cheap diode though, but my thoughts aren't as useful as what
alt.lasers might offer.
One good possibility is that many of the likely diodes are cheap, and you
could maybe afford to try a few. The photodiode should have survived, and
you can test for that as for any photodiode, if you know the existing diode
is dead, there's no risk in trying less than careful tests on that. That
would give you the right pin for ground and photodiode, plus polarity,
narrowing the search for a right diode a lot. Even a dead LD might also
give you the polarity to give the exact pinout. If you find you've got an
unusual pinout, the chances of identifying the diode improve hugely.
