1 kW Laser

I was thinking of saving up for a 1 kW laser rifle much like the one styropyro built in his video once I get my student loan paid off. What I would do differently would be to use NUBM44s focused independently with a G-2 lens', then much like styropyros to collimate them into one with a large lens at the end. I think driving them and focusing them independently would create a much better beam spot but would also cause a great deal of heat. I think a noble design could fix that easily though. I think it would cost me around $20k to do this but it would be absolutely insane. Some of you may think I've lost my mind but wouldn't that be a sight man, like to see a kilowatt of laser energy in a beam the diameter of a hair in a handheld device :beer:

Not a good idea for a lot of reasons.

Encap said:

Not a good idea for a lot of reasons.

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Well yeah I just found out that there probably isn't even enough NUBM44s to make this happen anyway

Not to mention it'd likely cost >$25,000. Better things to spend your money on. That's a 10% down payment on a decent house in many places. Or a nice vehicle bought outright.

HydroSean said:

Well yeah I just found out that there probably isn't even enough NUBM44s to make this happen anyway

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Yes plus beams do not combine the way you think--you can combine 2 beams with a PBS cube-- Polarized beam splitters take two beams of opposite polarization and combines them together but not possible to combine 200 5W or 166 6W beams into a single "beam the diameter of a hair"

See : http://laserpointerforums.com/f51/reference-guide-how-combine-lasers-77449.html

Would be a very expensive $20k practical joke more than anything else--at best all you could do is focus all of the beams individually onto one focal point to get a combined power at that one point -so a stationary setup with all of focused on one point and only that point. - or hand held at the exact distance of the focal point away from the target like styro did

diachi is 100% right--the money would be much better spent on something of value in the real world.

Hey... you got 20K to blow.... Knock yourself out.
Don't forget to take pics..

Jerry

That money could buy me a new sony camera.

Sorry but damn lasers are the last thing I would drop 20k on. If you got that kinda cash to blow then go nuts lol. Maybe your idea isn't completely crazy though, I'm sure if you scaled it down a bit then you'd have a really cool laser project on your hands. :yh:

The diode spacing alone would make this look nothing like a rifle.
The heat sinking and cooling material alone would make this look nothing like a rifle.
The power considerations alone would make this look nothing like a rifle.
Add these together, and you'd be lucky to get this working in a size smaller than a mini fridge.

Cyparagon said:

The diode spacing alone would make this look nothing like a rifle.
The heat sinking and cooling material alone would make this look nothing like a rifle.
The power considerations alone would make this look nothing like a rifle.
Add these together, and you'd be lucky to get this working in a size smaller than a mini fridge.

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You gotta think outside the box.
Maybe if he plundered all the diodes out of DVD/BluRay burners, he can claim that he "rifled" them from surplus?

:undecided:

HydroSean said:

like to see a kilowatt of laser energy in a beam the diameter of a hair in a handheld device :beer:

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This might actually pose a problem if you could achieve it.

If you get a kW of light and focus it down to a spot the width of a hair in free air, i think you'll reach the point of air breakdown. This basically causes sparks to appear in mid air.

I have seen this effect with pulsed lasers (1064 nm) and it looks quite spectacular, but i wonder what would happen if a continous laser was to cause this... perhaps a permanent arc discharging away somewhere around the focal point?