Real Homemade Pulse Laser Gun

Imagine what real research money and a few years could turn this into.
 
It's all shenanigans unless he shoots something interesting like the cat or himself :)
 
Phoenix333 said:
We always see balloons and plastic, etc. I want to see what it does to a nice thick chuck roast! :p
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That wouldn't be a half bad test.

The plasma ball is an interesting feature, I'm guessing it ionizes the air as the laser travels, but that would take energy out of the beam, plus its traveling at the speed of light, I'd think the plasma ball would move a bit faster.

Wonder why he did charred wood though, and not the unburnt part, where's the goes through metal demo, the aluminum it looked like it just burnt away the surface paint.

Forget batteries, hook one of those 18V LiIon power packs to it for ease of recharge, then the next time you see an overweight guy with a blanket tied around his neck and power packs in a bandolier you better run from him! :D
 
I am curious if a gigawatt or terawatt laser could be made that portable for military weapon use i imagine the power levels would have to be around a couple gigawatt or more.
 
Reminds me of that gun off "Minority Report" for some reason. Though it doesn't twirl like the one in the movie, just the first thing i though of for some reason. Pretty neat on the building of it though.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Wonder why he did charred wood though, and not the unburnt part
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probably because charred wood is carbonized, and the material right underneath the char is very close to the burning point, when the beam hits the charred part, it blows the carbon off and sets fire (well, smolders) to the stuff underneath allowing you to see that it is more than just punching thought the object as if it where a projectile, like a small BB.
 
This guy needs to talk to a defense contractor...Think he could make billions.
 
I also have been working on a weapon capable of similar destructive power... Although I wonder whether I should tell anyone about it, because it too could damage a person's eye quite easily...

But the [H] is a mature crowd, so I'll share with you all my upcoming device... I call it, "my pinky"

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Balloons? paper? really? It's cool and all... but... really?
 
RyanLucier said:
I also have been working on a weapon capable of similar destructive power... Although I wonder whether I should tell anyone about it, because it too could damage a person's eye quite easily...

But the [H] is a mature crowd, so I'll share with you all my upcoming device... I call it, "my pinky"

...
...

Balloons? paper? really? It's cool and all... but... really?
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Needs a pork roast/beef roast to act as an analogue for flesh. Needs more power/testing.
 
It's not hard to modify a laser to pop balloons and burn things, plenty of guides. He just made it look like a cool gun. A *real* weapon is probably not currently attainable with or without funding, as the power needed is not portable enough. Other technology has to catch up before we see a portable (real) weapon. Hell, the military has been working on their 747 based one for years and it's massive.
 
20 or so years ago there was a block of concrete 5-6 feet thick with 2 inch holes punched all the way through the concrete behind one of my college research buildings.

The holes were punched with a laser. It was a star wars research project.
 
If some anonymous dude can build a pulse laser gun, even on a small scale like this, then some corporation or elite group (US Dept of Defense or that of some other country) has probably already built something similar, but much more powerful/deadly.
 
yeap old stuff the setback was the "powerpack" and the fact that a man doesn't know where his shots are striking, no recoil
 
Part of the problem is that lasers make bad anti-personal weapons. The wounding potential isn't very good. The damage is localized to a very small region and is essentially self cauterizing.

Still pretty cool to make but lasers aren't the best option for killing people.
 
I figure like everything else its the lack of battery tech that holds these sorts of thing back.
 
Lunas said:
I am curious if a gigawatt or terawatt laser could be made that portable for military weapon use i imagine the power levels would have to be around a couple gigawatt or more.
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The problem with pulsed lasers, and other electronics projects like this, is that the stated power is usually the instantaneous power. I built a coil gun for a project that was 30 kilowatts, which sounds inpressive but it only shot BB's. 11 joules of capacitor energy discharged in 2 miliseconds works out to 30KW. When you take into account that about 10% made it to the projectile you ended up with about 1 joule of kinetic energy (A paintball from a paintball gun will have around 11 joules of kinetic energy). A laser is a bit different, but the laws still apply. X amount of energy discharged in Y seconds will get you an instantaneous power, and the amount transfered to the target is the amount of damage it does. This thing seems to have about the same destructive power as my coil gun in many of his tests, but my coil gun probably cost no where near that much, and can be scaled easily. Either way its a step forward, and I am happy that people do these projects. I would have done a rail gun, but I did not want to bother solving the rail degredation problem, or deal with random spot welding of the projectile to the rails. I got plenty of fires out of my coil gun with no mechanical wear. I probably will make one of these fun laser projects eventually. Just have to solve the shinny surface, shoot myself in the eye/body bug.
 
I am still trying to figure out how he got a 1 megawatt pulse out of that little thing. I would think he would be using some very high voltage rated caps as high farad would require to big of an awg to fit in that thing.
 
qbert95 said:
I figure like everything else its the lack of battery tech that holds these sorts of thing back.
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Hell yeah, I had that problem. That is the number one reason why advanced weapons aren't going to be hand held for a while. Its hard to store large amounts of electrons, and buffer them before they are used (capacitors are one of the few devices that can load themselves off of a battery and can store energy, and discharge it very quickly without damaging itself).
 
BravO))) said:
I am still trying to figure out how he got a 1 megawatt pulse out of that little thing. I would think he would be using some very high voltage rated caps as high farad would require to big of an awg to fit in that thing.
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1000 amps for 1 milisecond will do it. I was pushing over 100 amps through 24 AWG magnet wire. Heat really isnt an issue with pulsed weapons, especially with a low fire rate. It all depends on his voltage and resistances. I had 300 volts dropped across about 2.7 ohms which is about 111amps. If he had even 8 AWG wire he could easily do one megawatt. Probably tens of megawatts or more, havent really done any rough calculations.
 
Killermac said:
This guy needs to talk to a defense contractor...Think he could make billions.
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Why would a defense contractor want to talk to a person that makes toy laser guns?
Wish you were able to see what we already have developed, it would blow your mind.
 
To be honest, I'm impressed with the build quality etc, but I fail to see how this worth the time/effort. It's a one trick pony.
 
Untitledone said:
The problem with pulsed lasers, and other electronics projects like this, is that the stated power is usually the instantaneous power. I built a coil gun for a project that was 30 kilowatts, which sounds inpressive but it only shot BB's. 11 joules of capacitor energy discharged in 2 miliseconds works out to 30KW. When you take into account that about 10% made it to the projectile you ended up with about 1 joule of kinetic energy (A paintball from a paintball gun will have around 11 joules of kinetic energy). A laser is a bit different, but the laws still apply. X amount of energy discharged in Y seconds will get you an instantaneous power, and the amount transfered to the target is the amount of damage it does. This thing seems to have about the same destructive power as my coil gun in many of his tests, but my coil gun probably cost no where near that much, and can be scaled easily. Either way its a step forward, and I am happy that people do these projects. I would have done a rail gun, but I did not want to bother solving the rail degredation problem, or deal with random spot welding of the projectile to the rails. I got plenty of fires out of my coil gun with no mechanical wear. I probably will make one of these fun laser projects eventually. Just have to solve the shinny surface, shoot myself in the eye/body bug.
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Yeah that is why i was saying his little bb laser gun is fine for popping balloons or blinding people but for it to be a real weapon the power will have to be around 100,000x that gun in the same form factor that is why we don't have them yet. If i remember right the current laser tech that we do have weaponized is around the size of a Humvee and mounted in a 747 with a large generator to power the thing... I am curious on the range of that little one how far away does the pulse retain its burning power all the shots in the video seemed to be in about 10-15 feet.
 
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