"There is no, no good reason for anyone to own something this powerful"
June 8, 2015 6:42 AM   Subscribe

My Homemade 40W LASER SHOTGUN!!!!!: An array made of eight parallel five watt lasers, a 'choke' made out of lenses, and a 250 amp battery create destruction from the future a guy's garage. [slyt]
posted by quin (52 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
He's got a video on giant moths too, which I liked.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:49 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's really weird to watch something impart that much thermal energy to something without applying any (or negligible) kinetic energy to it. Just pointing it at a ping pong ball sitting on the ground, watching it burst into flame without rolling in any direction.
posted by penduluum at 6:51 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


I like this kid.

I'm going to need his address so I can check Google maps and confirm that he is at least five miles away from my house. Preferably 10 or more.
posted by Naberius at 6:58 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


It appears to have the same destructive potential as a cigarette lighter - but in a much more spectacular format. A giant flash of violet light, the coruscating beams tear apart the very fabric of space-time... and a small piece of brown paper is ON FIRE!

Remarkably silly. I love it to bits.
posted by Devonian at 7:02 AM on June 8, 2015 [19 favorites]


It appears to have the same destructive potential as a cigarette lighter

Except for the whole "any incident reflection causes instantaneous blindness" part. Those goggles he's wearing are mandatory for anyone in the same room with that thing.

"Do not look into laser with remaining eye."
posted by drklahn at 7:05 AM on June 8, 2015 [7 favorites]


This is only about 1.5 watts, but makes some pretty cool patterns in campfire smoke, or so I've heard.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:08 AM on June 8, 2015


Forty watts is the same energy used by a dimmish incandescent bulb. If you think of a bulb's filament, you can see that the laser plausibly puts out the same amount of heat.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:09 AM on June 8, 2015


Still a ways to go til the Metal Blaster, huh?
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:11 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I take it that one does not allow the cat to catch the dot.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:19 AM on June 8, 2015 [8 favorites]


That's the one thing that's missing from Star Wars: mirror shields!

Also this is pretty awesome. I imagine it's limited as any sort of practical weapon by the fact that your target can move out of the way or reflect the light, and that you'd have to be tied to a wall socket or an extremely limited battery.
posted by codacorolla at 7:29 AM on June 8, 2015


Waving 40W around with bright shiny metal surfaces? Dumb. Dangerously dumb. Yes, he's wearing goggles, but somebody walks around the corner at the wrong time and there's a hole in their retinas pretty much instantly because it hit a screw or one of the metal frame on that garage door and bounce off and *pfft.*

You cannot have shiny surfaces on the beam target when you're dealing with that much energy, doubly so when it's focused, which means YOU DON'T WAVE IT AROUND LIKE THAT.

Yeah, it sounds like I'm a grumpy old man, but it's stuff like this that gets people blinded. Playing with high power lasers is fun. Proper goggles is safety rule #1, but FIXED BEAM TARGETS is safety rule #2 and FIXED BEAM LINES is rule #3, because fixed targets mean nothing if the beam is moving.

Seriously. If you're dealing with this stuff, this is how you get hurt, and with your eyes, it takes *microseconds* for it go wrong.

I take it that one does not allow the cat to catch the dot

Safety Rule #4 is no cats ever.
posted by eriko at 7:37 AM on June 8, 2015 [22 favorites]


God, I sound like a fuddy duddy, but there's such a big difference in the world between a 5mw green and this.
posted by eriko at 7:38 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


>I imagine it's limited as any sort of practical weapon...

That depends on your objective. if your goal is to cause blindness in humans and destroy optics in cameras, 40W straight to the sensor will do a fine job.
posted by LiteS at 7:39 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


As an optical engineer, that video makes me deeply uncomfortable. That's 8 Class IV lasers ganged together. A specular reflection (e.g. off one of those metal pieces on his garage) with that much power could blind him or anyone foolish enough to be in the same room as him. I don't know what he's using for goggles, but I hope for his sake they have a super-high optical density in the violet.
posted by Upton O'Good at 7:43 AM on June 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


I'm also worried about the fumes this guy is breathing. He's doing it in a closed garage and I don't hear an exhaust fan.

/buzzkill
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:45 AM on June 8, 2015


That's the one thing that's missing from Star Wars: mirror shields!

Whatever those glowing projectiles are coming out of Star Wars weapons, they move slower than an acorn fired by a slingshot. They for sure ain't lasers.
posted by straight at 7:47 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]




I have to say, I worried about my own eyes while watching this, practically ducking out of the way of the YouTube video. I hope he is being careful enough!
posted by doozer_ex_machina at 8:04 AM on June 8, 2015


Why does he call it a shotgun? WHY!?!?!?!?

(Yeah, that's what I took away from the video. AR platform, single focused beam. Isn't this a laser RIFLE?))
posted by Seamus at 8:13 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's part of military history already.

"... Of the two soldiers from elsewhere in 3rd ESC with permanent eye injuries, one was attempting to employ the laser on a fast-approaching vehicle, Hayes said. To avoid exposing his arms above the turret, he shined his laser through a bulletproof window. The beam reflected back in his eye, causing an injury.
The other soldier was “lased” by a convoy entering an installation while the soldier manning an entry control point guard tower, Hayes said."
posted by hank at 8:17 AM on June 8, 2015


As the owner of a 1 watt blue laser I'm pretty sure that all of the things he did with the combined 5 watt lasers could be done with a single 5 watt laser. But don't. The danger of permanent blindness is too real.
posted by Splunge at 8:19 AM on June 8, 2015


Yeah, that's what I took away from the video. AR platform, single focused beam. Isn't this a laser RIFLE?

A "Laser Rifle" would seem to imply an individual burst or series of bursts. This device, projecting a continuous stream as long as you hold the trigger, is more like a "Laser Hose."
posted by chambers at 8:20 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's like the Akira Laser Rifle, but instead of carving out chunks of mutated psychic abominations it just lights them on fire if they stand still for long enough.
posted by codacorolla at 8:27 AM on June 8, 2015


It's part of military history already.

To expand on that, Laser Tanks have been a 'thing' for over 40 years.

Developed in the 1970s and into the 80s, the 1K17 Szhatie used a set of rods made of synthetic rubies, each weighing 66 pounds.

Lots of pictures and a bit more explanation here, Wikipedia info here.
posted by chambers at 8:31 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


Here is a story about a woman who lost a chunk of her sight thanks to a careless laser operator at burning man.

In general I approve of this kid doing stupid stuff, though. I grew up with redneck fun (albeit with fireworks, guns and jeeps) and I think that most people have an over protected youth.
posted by poe at 8:42 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why does he call it a shotgun?

If I were to guess, it's because he uses numerous laser emitters, which could be analogous to the multiple balls of shot in a shotgun shell. He also calls the lens system a choke, which, based on how it appears to work, would also be a fairly accurate parallel to the description of a shotgun.

Also, the beam probably spreads over distance, just like a shot shell pattern, but that's just me being snarky.
posted by quin at 8:44 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


dat heatsink

Also: if this freaks you out, search for videos of Russian kids and disassembled microwave magnetrons. So unbelievably unsafe you may get injured simply watching the video.
posted by GuyZero at 8:56 AM on June 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


If I were to guess, it's because he uses numerous laser emitters, which could be analogous to the multiple balls of shot in a shotgun shell. He also calls the lens system a choke, which, based on how it appears to work, would also be a fairly accurate parallel to the description of a shotgun.

Also, the beam probably spreads over distance, just like a shot shell pattern, but that's just me being snarky.


I agree that was probably his reasoning, but I'd still say his comparison is flawed. Overall the design is closer to the workings of a flamethrower with his 'choke' acting more like a 'nozzle,' regardless of the presence of multiple emitters. However, this being Metafilter, I'm sure the decision of whether or 'shotgun' is the right term could end up resulting in a stalemate, especially when we realize that it could all hang on whether we're talking about light being a particle or a wave, and then someone makes a comment about going on about semantic arguments when there's all this cool "LASER!" footage right there.

The fact that we can have both is why I love Metafilter.
posted by chambers at 9:15 AM on June 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


That Burning Man story... jesus, why the hell wasn't the rest of the story 'and then we had the idiots arrested'? They had a person permanently three quarters blinded by TWO different morons, including one where they knew exactly where it came from, and all they do is feebly ask people not to bring hand held lasers? How about 'if we catch you with a handheld laser of enough power to blind we will kick you out, not return your money, and never sell you a ticket again?'
posted by tavella at 9:27 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


It looks like they did ban handheld lasers and more severely restrict mounted ones after that article was written, so that's good.
posted by tavella at 9:36 AM on June 8, 2015


Well that was coherent.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:54 AM on June 8, 2015 [5 favorites]


Jesus Christ, this is dangerous. I don't think it's obvious from the video just how dangerous this is.
posted by alby at 9:59 AM on June 8, 2015


Well I mean if you're gonna be making a laser omelette you're gonna have to break a few laser eggs, I'm just saying.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 10:13 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I did a bunch of stuff with lasers at Burning Man early on, back when it was still sort of difficult to acquire them, and once actually held a workshop teaching people how to make their own sets of laser gloves such that each finger had an independent beam and you could make a fun little laser show by just wiggling your fingers... And I am absolutely a "safety third" kind of guy rather than "safety first".

but you know what? fuck yeah am I *ever* in favor of banning handheld lasers at Burning Man. They're dangerous and boring. So what, a wiggly dot jiggling random patterns all over the side of some random flat surface, who cares. If you want to do something interesting with a laser you need to hook it up to some galvanometers, and that means you have to actually sort of a little bit know what you are doing. Nothing of value is being lost by this new rule about lasers.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:22 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Okay, this guy's approach to safety is a little marginal. Hopefully all the doors to his garage are locked so nobody can wander in and all the windows covered, and if those shades he's wearing aren't going to save his vision from a chance reflection at least he's only going to damage or destroy his own vision and nobody else's.

So my principal objection to this video is that it makes it easier for the next, far stupider person to get the idea to build him some shit like this. Note the form factor and battery power instead of AC adapter. This thing is meant to leave the house, by design. And if you don't anticipate some fucknose showing up sooner or later on top of a freeway overpass or the like with a thing like this, then I wish I lived in your United States of America instead of, y'know, the real one.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:18 AM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


"That's the one thing that's missing from Star Wars: mirror shields!"

That's actually addressed in kliuless's first link — apparently, any dust on the surface gets burned in, destroying the reflective surface faster than non-reflective.
posted by klangklangston at 11:31 AM on June 8, 2015


This reminds me of the silent engines of electric cars. They're eerily quiet for people accustomed to combustion engines, hence some cars play skeuomorphic audio.

Something like this could use a "PEW! PEW! PEW!" Though, if this were really put to use to kill people, I don't know if that would be more or less disturbing than silence.
posted by ignignokt at 1:16 PM on June 8, 2015


That's for a pulse-firing energy weapon a la Star Wars or 2009 "Star Trek".
A beam weapon should sound like this.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:47 PM on June 8, 2015


"Something like this could use a "PEW! PEW! PEW!" Though, if this were really put to use to kill people, I don't know if that would be more or less disturbing than silence."

Also per kluiless's first link: The DoD folks who are working on anti-drone and anti-mortar lasers had trouble with an almost entirely automated system not alerting operating staff, so they added laser sounds and say they'll be using Star Wars and Star Trek sound bites going forward.
posted by klangklangston at 1:58 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


My Uncle Bob was chief scientist on a 4.2 GW space-based Photon Cannon in the 1980s.
posted by bassomatic at 2:31 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


The focusing seemed really impractical. He had to stand at the same distance from every object. "You there, hold on, I'm going to shoot you, but first I must adjust this lens ever so slightly to compensate for your distance. Would you say you're about 35 feet away from me?"
posted by Rhomboid at 3:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Something like this could use a "PEW! PEW! PEW!" Though, if this were really put to use to kill people, I don't know if that would be more or less disturbing than silence.

I am hearing a recording of a slightly adenoidal young man shouting 'PEW PEW PEW' coming out with each trigger pull and yes that would be diablo 2 cow level disturbing
posted by Sebmojo at 3:04 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


So, laser-knowledgeable folks: how much would the components to build something like this cost? And can they just be freely ordered online?

(I'm not asking because I want to build one—this thing terrifies me. Basically I'm just wondering how a kid who doesn't look any older than 20 can afford to build a laser death machine in his parents' garage.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:01 PM on June 8, 2015


He probably just bought it on eBay.
posted by FatherDagon at 4:08 PM on June 8, 2015


Oh yeah, it'd be easy to source the parts for this online. No hassle at all. I'm guessing he spent no more than $1k on it.
posted by Mars Saxman at 4:18 PM on June 8, 2015


I've done some really stupid stuff, and i've made some really stupid things. Stand up mopeds modified to go >40mph(with no helmet! or anything!), a stupid homemade rickshaw, stupid fireworks shit, fucking around with neon sign transformers, and a whole lot more.

I actually considered making something like this when i was in high school and optimally stupid, and ended up not doing it because

1. WOAHMG DANGERUSS
2. where, how, and when could you even use this? You're going to want to just like, walk out of your house and blow shit up because duh but this is honestly more dangerous than a gun. It's probably about as dangerous as a garage gun, as far as maiming/random non-death harm goes to yourself and bystanders. This is like stovepipe slamfire shotgun levels of stupid.

Which is, i guess, sort of awesome in the same way that the gas powered shopping cart gokarts i almost finished were... but while not really a death machine, i'd feel infinitely safer fucking around with an old roofing flamethrower i found in a free bin.

Your friend can't stand next to your with a fire extinguisher to put the lasers out, and while you can get burned pretty badly the burn and damage here is fucking instantaneous.

Maybe i'm just getting old, but if i walked in to a room and someone had one of these i'd go "FUCKING COOL" and then turn and run.


I also almost knocked my friends girlfriend out once for shining a 1w laser in my face/eyes that left a spot for days, and gave my friend a ton of shit for just... letting random drunk people at a party play with it. Imagine this thing just sitting on some shelf and some rando picking it up and shining it at a few things.

Fuckkkkk that. The laser canons of the future better be smartguns.
posted by emptythought at 11:53 PM on June 8, 2015


I wonder if it could be adapted for anti-surveillance purposes against cameras mounted on aerial drones and light aircraft or helicopters. It probably doesn't need to be nearly so powerful, and the multiple beams would mean you don't have to be spot-on accurate in aiming.
posted by um at 1:35 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


um: I wonder if it could be adapted for anti-surveillance purposes against cameras mounted on aerial drones and light aircraft or helicopters. It probably doesn't need to be nearly so powerful, and the multiple beams would mean you don't have to be spot-on accurate in aiming.
Absofuckinglutely not.

What goes up will always come down and, even if you don't give a shit about murdering the pilot as well as any passengers in light aircraft or helicopters that you might point lasers at, you should absolutely care about what they or a drone land on.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also drones, light aircraft, and helicopters are full of shiny metal bits and, depending on the altitude, a successful hit on one with something like this would also spray the ground with fragments of high energy laser over an impressively horrifying area.

Absofuckinglutely not.

Lasers are not toys, and while they might make effective weapons, just about all of the alternatives beat using weapons against your community just about all of the time. If you don't like being watched there are much better and much more effective options available to you to bring about positive change than murdering civil servants, making heavy things fall out of the sky, or endangering the eyesight of everyone around you.
posted by Blasdelb at 5:56 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Hoooooly shit. This video, plus the Burning Man article, and hold on, let me wrench my shoulders down from around my ears to try to type something coherent. I am literally taking some deep breaths right now and trying to relax, because these kinds of things are my worst fucking nightmare.

So, I'm blind in one eye, through a freak retinal detachment that happened for no reason when I was a senior in college. It's been 5+ years and 6 surgeries later, and we've finally given up on ever getting me my lost vision back. I'm one eye away from being blind, and having to totally revamp my entire career, hobbies, and life; and that one eye has had some lattice degeneration and had to get (medical) lasers fired into it a couple times to be sure it won't do the same thing as the other one. I feel such rage at the idea that some careless idiot that wants to play with a pew pew pew OMG laser toy could take it away from me in an instant. I feel so hard for Kelli Hoversten, who was working as a volunteer trying to keep people from doing dumb shit, and I'm now mildly terrified that that could happen to me if I return to the playa. Yeah, yeah, safety third, how uncool of me to think of curtailing people's fun and ability to play with fun toys. Whatever.

I do live a pretty normal life, and finally mustered up the courage to drive again and even parallel park. But not having depth perception is a real thing--from slipping down stairs and sidewalk curbs when I couldn't see the edge properly, to dumb shit like getting ice cream all over my fingers when I try to take the sample spoon from the person holding it out to me and pouring water over the table because I missed the cup. I'm now complete shit at ping pong and will never be able to watch a 3D movie (though that may not be a loss).

I don't know where I was going with this rant, just, ugh. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Just be careful, or at least keep the damage limited to yourself.
posted by j.r at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


I wonder if it could be adapted for anti-surveillance purposes against cameras mounted on aerial drones and light aircraft or helicopters.

I agree with Blasdelb, but I think some equally reckless and foolhardy anti-surveillance vigilante would go after stuff like speed traps, red light cameras, and those remote controlled police cameras that some cities have been putting on telephone poles all over town.

They might think they're being smart by not getting the Feds after them by targeting a drone or plane, but as said above several times, the laser from one of these things can blind someone just from it reflecting, and that puts not only passing drivers, but pedestrians and even people inside their homes if they were in just the wrong place at just the wrong time.

I'm surprised such dangerous vandalism, however wrapped in 'fight big brother' it may be, hasn't become a more common thing yet, especially where I am in Chicago, where all three of those kinds of cameras are everywhere, and the city was recently in hot water over how it was handling red light cameras.

There is little that can be done to effectively prevent high powered lasers from being used in such ways though, only ones that make it slightly harder to obtain for someone that is determined to get one and use it for illegal and downright dangerously stupid things. I suppose the grim "upside" to this is that there is a decent chance that these vigilantes will most likely inadvertently blind themselves or someone they actually care about before they go out and put a lot of other people at risk.
posted by chambers at 11:49 AM on June 9, 2015


I agree with Blasdelb, but I think some equally reckless and foolhardy anti-surveillance vigilante would go after stuff like speed traps, red light cameras, and those remote controlled police cameras that some cities have been putting on telephone poles all over town.

Seems unnecessary. I guess there's some amusement value in cooking the thing, but if the goal is just to make it non-functional I would think you'd be better served with a bunch of $3 junk laser pointers that you duct-tape to a pole so it's aimed at the thing. Till the battery goes out you've disabled it with glare/overload and you don't look like a fucking stormtrooper.
posted by phearlez at 10:03 AM on June 10, 2015


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