[Johannes] has been reading Hackaday for years but this is the first project he’s tipped us off about. It’s a laser engraver built from a DVD burner diode (translated). It turned out so well we wonder ...

If you’ve played around with laser diodes that you’ve scavenged from old equipment, you know that it can be a hit-or-miss proposition. (And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?) Besides the real ...

Things are looking dicey for both HD DVD and Blu-ray, because a key component has suddenly become scarce: blue laser diode yield rates are only 30% according to Nichia, a company responsible for 80% ...

Heilbronn, Germany — Atmel Corp.'s ATR084x family is designed for digital versatile disk with read/write function (DVD±RW)/CD-RW combo drives and enables RW speeds of up to 16 times (DVD±RW), and 52 ...

Santa Clara, CA”November 10, 2003″Making a dramatic entry into a fast-growing market, National Semiconductor Corporation introduced laser diode drivers (LDDs) that will allow desktop and notebook ...