styropyro

big lasers

Added 2024-11-25 23:10:09 +0000 UTC

While reading and gathering equipment for the "penny laser" project, I decided to revisit the giant handheld laser that failed on me earlier this year. I tore it down once again, and like the previous failures, I could not figure out what went wrong. My top guess is that something shorted through the case, as everything was jam packed in there.

Moving forward, I am considering downgrading this project to a single array, mostly to free up space inside the laser. As disappointing as this would be, it would still be more than double the power of my next strongest handheld laser. Plus, an even better sketchy array became available recently, so I can still reach the same brightness of the previous target. I'm going to try rebuilding the laser with the single array, and if it doesn't blow up this time, then I'll probably just run with it and make a video about that. At 200W~250W it'll still be my most impressive handheld laser yet. Stay tuned!