This guy built a 40 watt laser rifle.
“My Homemade 40W LASER SHOTGUN!!!”
Was expecting a portable CO2 build (its been done before).
That thing is just a module out of a projector strapped to a gun. Beams are not combined at all.
Looks impressive although I was expecting 40W would do more damage then demo’d in the video. it’s already had over 500,000 views.
Its not 40W, its 8 separate 5W beams. Its focused a bit by his close up lens but they are not combined. Clearly it is just a quick video for youtube views. Even combined its difficult to get a small spot size when starting with 8 beams. You could only get it down to 4 beams wide (knife edge two sets of 4 and combine with polarization coupling). Also it just takes a massive amount of power to cut through things instantly like in movies.
The 4000-6000 watt lasers we run at work cut through things very quickly, but at 20,000-70,000lbs they’re not very portable, and consume a lot of energy. :bigsmile:
Hey, just what you see pal.
…24*LM317s
What a noob.
Ha, probably because you can’t parallel up laser diodes as you can with LED’s. They’re very sensitive to current had have varying forward voltages.
Putting them in series would also be a challenge, as it would require high voltages.
Extended wilson mirror.
This must be a diode array out of a laser projector. When the first (budget) 445nm diode laser projectors arrived, they made a big scene in the laser world. The Casio XJ-A140 was found to have a little bit better diodes than the XJ-A130 (by 30% output or so). Both projectors from what I recall hit the market back near the same time, and if I had to guess I would say in 2009-2010 or thereabouts was the year they became popular for diode removal. The A140 diodes were the first diodes which could be pushed usually between 1.5-1.7W safely. This set off an explosion in the laser world. Wicked Lasers…a company it has been highly recommended NOT to buy from, at this same time unleashed the Arctic “1W” laser. They were mostly found to have 700-800mW. Regardless. This laser seemed to make the handheld laser market popular overnight. Now “1W” diodes could be in anyone’s hands.
The problem with the 445nm diodes is the classification of a multi-mode laser. It’s “emitter die” or emitter region is, for example, 1x100µm size. So the emitting region is a line essentially. In reality the beam shape, due to intensity and object surface refraction effects, will appear as something like a football at distance to your vision, or a 1mm x 4mm line at a few feet. In the laser world, the energy is somewhat high, but not very concentrated at all for producing an intense point. You can use a cylindrical lens or a prism-pair to widen the fast-axis but this as you can see, doesn’t entirely solve the physical problem of where the light emits from. However in what’s known as a single-mode diode, the emitting region is for example 1x3µm and is extremely close to a point. This type of single-mode diode had long been available before the 445nm diodes arrived, via the Blu-Ray player and its 405nm diode. The 12X BR disc burner was the burner that made me realize, purple was the color. The beam could be kept incredibly narrow. Although charts show 405nm near-UV light as being miniscule on the vision chart—as if it would barely be seen next to a green laser, the diodes appear to me, as they do many people, to have a beam that surely creates a reaction. Some say that a 500mW violet beam will appear only like a 30mW green 532nm. At night however, it can’t be explained entirely, but that feels furthest from the truth. Most likely due to the scotopic vision shift of human eyes at night and a blue-shift in vision, a 600-800mW 405nm laser beam would appear as bright or as attention-getting as 150mW-200mW of green. I attribute this some bit to Rayleigh scattering, since 405nm light will refract highly off particles, and the beam’s overall concentration. These diodes are the best at “stinging” a hand. I mean, watch out. At 2 meters the burn from 600mW of 405nm on skin occurs almost instantly.
The 445nm diodes also have incredible beams at night. Though they are stronger across one axis, the beam is extremely vivid. It’s unfortunate they cannot slice as well as a 12X 405nm can. Now, there are 16X 405nm diodes, and I am updating a few builds as of late with them. They are single-mode, and 1W capable. It’s a dream come true as far as lasers go.
If an array of 445nm diodes could be tuned and run near true parallel, once the beam radius exceeded half the separation distance between the two diodes furthest apart in the array, you would have all beams starting to stack on top one another. At a few hundred meters, there would surely be an intense beam appearing as one. But, getting them all in true parallel would be an all-day task.
Here is one of the Casio 445nm arrays pulled from a projector:
Where do you buy the appropriate optical density glasses to work with that?
Oem use to have good prices for certified glasses but it looks like they’re no longer selling them? oemlasersystems glasses
ThorLabs glasses OD 7+
I wouldn’t trust eagle pair glasses for high power 405nm. Not certified. As MEM said 405nm diodes are single mode, spot is more intense, burns through quicker.
Yellow color lens blocks UV light. There’s certainly certified glasses that will cost more and certify your protection, but if you can block the light, you can block the light—it won’t be getting to your eyes. I have found certain yellow safety glasses that will block >99% of 405nm light. If I was playing with 365nm light, this would be a lot different story, as the more harmful UV wavelengths present a real problem I wouldn’t be messing with. At 405nm however, the light is all visible spectrum, and glasses I use are not coated—they are solid yellow material which blocks 405nm. I can see every detail of the dot at 800mW using my googles, and the dot is only a dim few mW using them. I do not recommend this practice just because I explain it! I have directly sacrificed a goggle set to test light % which makes it through by aiming right through to a laser meter. Most yellow-coated glasses the coating burns right off when doing this. Solid glasses just start to melt and deform where struck, but do not change color or spectrum filtering ability.
http://www.photobiology.info/Rozanowska.html
That’s a very long, detailed paper.
Shorter: Several weeks go by, after the exposure, before the damage to the retina finishes happening.
That’s about how long it takes for the cells at the back of the eyeball to die off.
Just sayin’.