Burning Handheld Laser

[Switch]

Wow. I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask the question, although I'm going to preface this with letting you know I have no intention of attempting to actually do this: Could that laser gun be used for hunting in place of a rifle?

Definetly not, and no you can't build one that could. The laser from amazing1 is a 20W CO[sub]2[/sub] tube and CW as I recall, not pulsed.And it probably can't do alot most metal objects.And it can't be used as any type of an effective weapon either.It would be pretty hard to try and kill someone with it even if he was standing still a few inches from you. And laser hunting probably wouldn't be all that safe since you would be starting forest fires on every miss. :-/

 

[Lotus_Darkrose]

Yeah, I was mainly commenting on the "idea" of it all :

 

[Cyparagon]

Lets not kid ourselves. This is infeasible. Additionally, Killing with lasers is very impracticable.

Also, any laser that can kill a deer can easily kill a man and would be far more dangerous than a gun that can kill a deer.

 

[Tech_Junkie]

I have 2W and 4W 808nm handhelds. These will definitely do more than pop balloons or burn black paper. These will light a wood match by the wood, and will burn through thick dark plastic. Steel wool lights up instantly. Firework fuses are instantly lit. I burned a wood pencil in half. To get into these, you need to be able to use c-mount diodes. C-mount laser heads are rarer than hens teeth or frogs milk these days, so you need access to a metal lathe to make your own. I think that Kenom is coming out with a c-mount host sometime. To burn a hole in a tin can lid, you need to step up to a laser diode bar. My 60W 808nm lasers easily burn through a tin can lid. This would be a big handheld, however. A 60W handheld running on lipos with a few minutes runtime would be about 2.75" x 14" in size. (Not quite finished mine yet...)

Some IR related videos :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9pye4NvLi4  2W handheld
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymz2f3HEvrE  2W 808nm and 4W 960nm handhelds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzDrZvcDcpA  A 60W 808nm burning a few things

 

[SuicideKing]

I wouldn't say impossible, but it would be so impractical, that it would border on the ridiculous.

It's like the flying car or the personal jetpack; yes, some exist, people have built them, but along with having extremely short flight times, for the same amount of money, you could buy both a new car and a helicopter.

But take heart, it was only a few years ago they were saying the same thing about laser pointers ever being powerful enough to light matches or pop ballloons. -Advances are happening everyday. It's only a matter of time before they tricle down to the consumer level. When they do, buy QUICKLY. The first time some yahoo lops his nieghbors arm off with his new DIY project, expect a world wide ban.