My first class 3 laser

Hello, I am wanting to try and make a few cheap around 1 - 2 watt power lasers. I have bought a few china Laser diode casings, and had a few laser diodes I got from dvd burners , but they got fried. Would a simple lm317 voltage regulator driver work for one of these? If not what is something I could look into?
-Ben

It is better to drive LEDs with a controlled current than a voltage. The LM317 can be configured as a current control device. See it's datasheet for how to do it.

But you will need to know what current to set it for. That needs to come from the LED's datasheet.