2000 USD to buy a laser that can blast through

http://www.amazing1.com/burning-lasers.htm
it doesnt seem even possible that the usa would allow such a weapon to exist. if this is what they truly state, 100watts of contained power.....using alkalines !!!!
anyone know anything about this???

100 watts of input power anyway. Says right on the PDF that it uses a 20 watt CO2 laser tube. (that's the one you're talking about right?)

CO2 lasers are good at burning, but a 100 watt power draw is going to need a pretty beefy battery - think backpack style with a cable going to the unit. Not really very portable but it should do its job.

"power supply delivers over 100 watts of power to this directed energy beam device" doesn't equal 100 watts of power coming out of the energy beam device.  

A quick search finds wikipedia, which says that output efficiencies can be as high as 20% for CO2 lasers, and 20% of the 100W source would very closely match the 20W tube they sell right above that "laser weapon".  

ETA: ^Yeah, what he said.

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But it's a fully-equipped 20W CO2 laser, that's not an out of reason item there at all.  

And alkalines? No.  Just no.  Think about it, it's a 100W power supply.  How many D batteries do you need to get 100W of power out of your battery pack?  I'm not really certain, but a quick back-of-the-envelope says you're looking at hundreds of D batteries for any kind of run-time, and that's in no way ideal for anything.  So I guess portable is all relative.  The instructions on the site say it runs off 115VAC or "an optional battery pack and inverter".  Not sure what their pattery pack looks like, but I'll wager it's not alkalines.

And as far as it being a weapon, I'd say no.  You're talking very big, very heavy, very bulky, only burns best when focused precisely to an exact point, and it's made of fragile glass inside.  Yeah, I'm not really scared of this thing.  

pullbangdead said:

And as far as it being a weapon, I'd say no.  You're talking very big, very heavy, very bulky, only burns best when focused precisely to an exact point, and it's made of fragile glass inside.  Yeah, I'm not really scared of this thing.  

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i have to disagree on that. it can easily be used as a weapon (nowhere the word "lethal" is used btw), and there are many weapon systems out there that are much more complicated.
though i am not scared of the thing alone, i would be scared if someone points it bond-style at my balls and threatens to fire it... :-/

Seriously, if someone were to point this at your chest from point-blank range and pull the trigger, this is what would happen:

"OW... hey you just burned me a little. There's a little hole in my shirt! Thanks a lot, now I need a new shirt."

...followed by a severe thumping, I'd wager.

Real laser "weapons" are mounted on tanks and 747's, and every time you pull the trigger it costs American taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. I'd be more worried about a Hercules in my eyes than a 20W CO2 laser in my chest, especially considering that with CO2 you have a focal depth of about an inch so if I take a step forward or back there will be no effect on me at all!

The 20KV power supply is far more dangerous than the 20W output of the laser.

What would the electric bill be if you decided to use that thing for an hour?

Justin said:

Seriously, if someone were to point this at your chest from point-blank range and pull the trigger, this is what would happen:

"OW... hey you just burned me a little. There's a little hole in my shirt! Thanks a lot, now I need a new shirt."

...followed by a severe thumping, I'd wager.

Real laser "weapons" are mounted on tanks and 747's, and every time you pull the trigger it costs American taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. I'd be more worried about a Hercules in my eyes than a 20W CO2 laser in my chest, especially considering that with CO2 you have a focal depth of about an inch so if I take a step forward or back there will be no effect on me at all!

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Exactly!

Plus, with the tube being made of glass, 1 good hit with a bat or club or anything breaks the glass, and it's done.  

Or, you can unplug it.

kendon-I mean sure, it COULD be used as a weapon, but so can any rock, and so can your favorite pencil.  That doesn't mean it'll be ANY kind of an effective weapon.  Walk at me menacingly with that thing, and I'm just not really going to be scared.  It wouldn't be a very effective weapon at all, really. I'm 99% certain if you bring that thing and I bring my favorite slingshot, I'd win that shootout. I'm a pretty good shot with a slingshot.

laser83 said:

What would the electric bill be if you decided to use that thing for an hour?  

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Oh come now, you can do this! That isn't a hard math problem. Just find the price for a kW-h of electricity on your electric bill (or look up the average cost somewhere online, and then use the fact that you're drawing around .1kW for 1 hour. You can do this one, I promise.

so there is no way for someone to blind me with this over a serious distance without me even knowing what happens? i'm still not talking about lethal injuries.

kendon said:

so there is no way for someone to blind me with this over a serious distance without me even knowing what happens? i'm still not talking about lethal injuries.

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CO2 lasers are different in that the light would be absorbed by the cornea of the eye, not the retina so it would take a significant hit with power behind it to burn the cornea

The "ray gun" he's talking about is farther down the page. It's a NdYag pulsed portable. $2000 ???? Get a SSY-1 assembly and put a camera falsh power supply on it. Cost ~$175 ;D

Mike

Hey Mike,
Gooey Gus and I are working on powering a SSY-1 right now, could you tell us more about powering it with a camera flash-unit?
We are working on using the power-supply from a battery-powered flouresent-light, as was suggested by another forum member that has some experience with such devices.
Thanks!

laser83 said:

What would the electric bill be if you decided to use that thing for an hour?

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100W at 1 hour is .1KWh. 10¢ × .1 = [highlight]1¢[/highlight]

Well, that amount of current, can be produced by the human fart! Didn't you know that! It's so abundantly available.


Plutonium?

That "ray gun" as a weapon -hardly! : I've got the one at the top of the page which I picked up hardly-used on Ebay for less than what they are asking for it. It's a nice laser and works well, and sure as hell is a lot lighter to lift than any of my argons, and no it seems to have no impact on my electric bill, even though I've only run it for 20mins or so at a time. I worry more about what my argons might do to my electric bill than that. Now my ex-roommate's 42 inch LCD TV - now that thing was an energy hog - the combined power bill dropped by $50 after she moved out!

But the "Beast" as I call it - it's the most powerful laser I currently own - has such poor divergence that at about 20 feet you can just about put your hand in the beam and all you feel is warmth....hardly good for any kind of weapon! The laser weapons being worked on by the military have some fancy optics to counter the lousy divergence of IR laser energy over vast distances.

But up close and focused, it sliced right thru raw chicken skin like a hot knife thru styrofoam (20 watts of CO2 laser energy focused will also cut and melt glass) - so it could certainly cause some injury if you were to accidentally get a part of your body caught in the beam.