I have had the laser on my Monster hollowing rig crap out twice since I bought it last May. Randy has been totally responsive, sending me a new module, no charge, no questions asked, on both occasions. I was looking at the guts of these little modules and realized why they are failing. The laser itself has three tiny wires protruding from the back that are attached to a small chip with very tiny soldered joints. Vibration transmitted through the mounting stem and rail is causing these connections to break. The chip is housed in a small brass capsule and there is a heat shrink wrap around the bottom where the soldered joints are.
While I was waiting for my replacement, I picked up a small laser pointer at Office Max (eleven bucks) and hacked the plastic shell to get the little laser module out. It's almost identical to the ones that come with the Monster except for no brass capsule and there's a small momentary contact switch on the chip. I figured I could "jury rig" this to get me by until the new one came. I ended up cutting the plastic shell down and filling it with JB QuickWeld epoxy (after popping switch open and flipping over the little dimple so that it was always on). I did this mostly because it was the only way I could come up with the get the thing to stay together. But then I realized that with the entire chip encased in epoxy, this would probably prevent the vibration from causing the soldered joints to break. This worked out OK except that the whole thing is about five times bigger than the little brass capsule the Monster laser is housed in. Not really a problem unless you are trying to navigate it through a Jeff Nichol steady!
When I got the new module from Randy, I slipped the shell off, carefully cut away the heat shrink tubing and filled the shell with epoxy, being careful not to disturb the chip or the contacts. Once it set up, the back of the laser module, the contact points and the chip are all solidly encased in epoxy. I'm hoping that this will prevent the laser from failing again. So far I have gotten an average of eight months of light use out of one. So I will have to see how well this holds up over the long run. If I remember, I will report back after another eight months and let you know how well it's holding up.
Oh, and one other thing… if you do this, be careful not to get any of the epoxy on the laser lens!!!