I run a repair and mod shop and I have been getting a few calls a week about people with PS3's that wont read disks.
So I located a supplier in China and got a few lasers w/ deck and found out they are not new but they are refurbished. Upon doing some more research it would seem new replacement blue ray lasers are very hard to come by perhaps not even possible to find. (or if you do find them new the supplier is lying and they are refurb)

So I have a couple of questions.

Does anyone know where to get NEW blue ray lasers for PS3 ?

The ones I have replaced for people so far have stopped playing CD's, DVD's and Blue ray all at once. The laser assembly has many parts on it. Has anyone narrowed down specifically what is causing them to fail ?

If there is people refurbishing these then I would sure love to know how they do it? Anyone got a clue?

Just after posting this i found this part for sale for cheap!

http://www.psxboy.com/871_PS3-KES-410A-Las...de-(4-pin).html

Anyone got a tutorial on installing it? I am attempting to remove it from mine right now.

yes , its well known that the blue ray laser diode is the one that fails , it stops emmiting the blue laser ,or some times stops emmiting at all ,even the red laser for dvd's , the replacement of the diode will get it back to work , but belive me its not an easy task , you have to be an ultra pro with handy things , to be able to get them done right ,i did a few , and they are working ok
and thanks for the link ,

one more thing , i know that the 400a laser that you can find in the old ps3's 20 and 60 GB consoles , has a laser diode with 5 pins ,
the question is : is there any way to use the 4 pin diode in it
i cant find any 5 pin diodes on the internet any where , but 3 pin and 4 pin diodes are available in many places , and cheap too

Sorry to rez the dead but does anyone have a tutorial on diassembly of the laser?

i have been looking for a guide for this also. i have tons of ps3 lasers that will not read blu rays and it would be nice to get them working and sell them all. I am sitting on a small fortune in them if i can.

to mr2000jp, here is a link: http://www.bonanza.com/listings/PS3-KEM-40...ES-400A/7630152

but does anyone know which pins are for what on the 5 pin laser diodes? i'm currently trying to mod the laser for other things and can't find anything on the web describing the use of each pin

oh, and here is another link to buy the five pin laser diodes: http://www.excheap.com/product_info.php?products_id=4636

and forget about my last question, i found a link explaining it all: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/Blu-ray/site1/

Reviving the dead here: Did anyone notice it's only $4 more for the entire laser assembly on that excheap website? Has anyone ordered from that site before, and if so...can you comment on the reliability of their lasers? I was just removing a diode off a dead laser. All that's left is the desoldering. But then I saw their price on the KES-400A. I'd pay $4 extra not to have to mess with that tiny stuff! Edit: Plus I don't own an o-scope!

The referbs are sourcing old original diodes, sometimes used. It blows my mind how expensive they are. The cheapest 400A diode I've found so far was just as expensive as the whole laser "sled" from others shipping out of China. I've replaced many, some have died after a year and needed replacing again, others are still going strong.

When they die, the Blu ray diode shorts out. VLD pin is just 4 ohms or so from ground. All other laser pins are still 1500+ Ohms. It powers the VLD, detects a short and shuts down, it seems pin PD monitors the diodes anode power but I can't find exact specs. I've tried cheap 405nm Diodes and they get the disks to spin for a while but fail to pick up after 5 seconds or so. I've even wired a potentiometer to try fine tuning while it was spinning. No luck but I think it is possible with the right type diode and wiring. The cheap diodes I tried were 20mW, I read somewhere that 400A doides might be 40mW-120mW or so.

Hi,

They die because of the chip atached to the diode on the KES-400A. It is supplied by the small chip with the metal square on top. The chip is supplying too much voltage to the diode, around 8V or maybe more if it is high frequency pulsed. Dont know exactly the specs of the this diodes(5 pin SLED) but i tried the same 20mw Bluray laser diodes from ebay, the first one burn in a second so i atached a 5v voltage regulator to the lens casing, the result is a lasting laser and a 5 second spin when bluray is inserted.
Bought an complete assembly frame with spiner motor and pickup lenses and only lasted a few hours. So from this i would say thar they die because:

- the bluray mainBoard: some bad component related to pickup lense assembly, like a regulator(just saying)...

- firmware issue, maybe sony tried to skweeze all the power from the PS3, the problem is that results in more heat, and by that i mean hardware instabilities that lead to failure.

I will try to boost the cheap 20mw SLED to 5.5V to see if i can get it to read, althogh i think it wont work because of the firmware is designed to read a certain speeds and the output power must be related with the reading speed.

As anyone swap the entier bluray drive and solve the problem?
As anyone tried more powerfull diodes?