Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

Buy Site Supporter Role (remove some ads) | LPF Donations

Links below open in new window

FrozenGate by Avery

Laser Cigarette Lighter?

The only problem I see with this is protecting your laser from the tar and nicotine. If you use a lens and the cigarette lights too close to it, it wont take long for it to cause problems. If the design uses an exposed diode, same thing.

You may get it to work, but getting beyond lighting even a pack of smokes worth, in a confined space will just work against you.

Now maybe if there is room for a small fan (larger unit / table top lighter..) to keep the laser area free of smoke, the reliability factor may go up. Remember cig smoke is very sticky and gums up things (like your lungs :P) almost effortlessly, your going to have to try and work around this.

Best of luck, it will be interesting to see the results :)

*edit*

If you are going to cover the lighting area to protect the eyes, you wont see the beam. So its probably a good idea to use cheap power such as a 500mW 808nm IR diode. The most bang for your buck, effective burning at close range and needs less voltage than other diodes.
 





Spyderz20x6 said:
Lol, you are out of luck. There is already a patent on a laser cigarette lighter.
Click to expand...
As long as the design is at least 50% different you can patent anything.
Gotta link? I'd like to check it out.
I just got excited. One accident and lawsuits abound. I have seen so many of my ideas in the past come to life by other people it make me sick. It costs a lot of cash for a patent, production, marketing, and advertising. Then if someone gets hurt you could literally be in the hole for life. Not worth it for a lighter in my opinion. But it would make a cool DIY toy. You know everyone would want to know were you got from. Smoker or not. I will make one, just need to save some cake.
 
Tech_Junkie said:
[quote author=Spyderz20x6 link=1231476210/20#31 date=1231650264]Lol, you are out of luck. There is already a patent on a laser cigarette lighter.
Click to expand...
As long as the design is at least 50% different you can patent anything.
Gotta link? I'd like to check it out.
I just got excited. One accident and lawsuits abound. I have seen so many of my ideas in the past come to life by other people it make me sick. It costs a lot of cash for a patent, production, marketing, and advertising. Then if someone gets hurt you could literally be in the hole for life. Not worth it for a lighter in my opinion. But it would make a cool DIY toy. You know everyone would want to know were you got from. Smoker or not. I will make one, just need to save some cake.[/quote]
US Patent 5268553
Look it up.
 
If you plan on selling them its one thing, but if not, theres nothing for a patent holder to do. If this is for your amusement, you can copy it as much as you want.

And if the patent is in a public domain, all the better ;)
 
An electrically powered portable cigarette lighter includes a laser for generating a beam of energy and means directing the beam to a point in the region of the end of a cigarette inserted into the lighter. Means are provided for preventing the beam of energy from escaping through the opening in which the cigarette is inserted.
Click to expand...

Well, they can't patent the laser or the lasing principle and they can't patent the lighter body unless the body itself does something intrinsically new. My s.w.a.g. is the actual patent focuses on the "means for preventing the beam of energy from escaping". -Get the details of the patent and just make sure your build isn't exactly like it.

If I were given the task: "Go out and build, a consumer level, laser powered cigarette lighter that even an idiot can use safely"
This is what I would make.

PROTOTYPE

Start with a Maglite Solitaire, or similar sized host and a 200ma IR laser diode.
Unlike a standard flashlight mod, the LD is mounted about halfway down the body.
Half of the flashlight body is dedicated for the diode, current controller and three or four button batteries and the rest of the body is just an open tube that you insert the cigarette into. It's important that the tube be just big enough for a standard cigarette to fit. -this will limit any escaping IR. The other safety item would be a small wire contact switch a quarter of the way inside the tube. -so the laser can only turn on, if there's a cigarette inserted all the way into the barrel. -There are a couple of other bells and whistles I can think of, but you get the gist.

See, the gimmick or sales pitch of the lighter is, it's all automatic and flameless. Just stick in your cig and start puffing, you don't turn it on, you don't turn it off. Best of all, it's just the right size to keep in your open cigarette pack -it being almost the same size as a cigarette itself, it can be kept in the vacant slot left by the cigarette you just lit up.


maglite.jpg


Now go make a million dollars

-SK
 
I think it's more practical to use a treadmill to generate power and store it in a battery, then use the power from the battery to power a laser that is transmitted to a solar panel which relays the power to a light that grows some corn. The corn is harvested and made into ethanol which is fed through a tube to an ignitor and BAM you have a flame which can light a cigarette!

But seriously, what's the fun in using a laser if you can't see it or what it's burning? Why not have a battery powered filament or dare I say... a lighter? It can be argued that it's building for the fun of it, but why not make the device mentioned in the first paragraph? If it's worth doing, it's worth over doing! :)
 
Using button cells may be an issue, as the last time I checked they can only provide something like 33ma a piece. A penlight will only allow the batteries to be installed in series, for this reason alone a Zippo housing may be more suitable. You would have to use 4 button cells in series and paralell two packs of the 4, to get a decent current.

Even at 250ma, I cant think of any diodes that will light a smoke. Definately one of the trickiest builds to ever grace the pages here. I think its time to find my old Zippo ;)
 
Cyparagon said:
I think it's more practical to use a treadmill to generate power and store it in a battery, then use the power from the battery to power a laser that is transmitted to a solar panel which relays the power to a light that grows some corn. The corn is harvested and made into ethanol which is fed through a tube to an ignitor and BAM you have a flame which can light a cigarette!
Click to expand...

OK, but who's gonna feed the squirrel running on the treadmill?
 
If this idea is still alive, it would probably be practical to have a 1-2W IR pump diode inside the "body" of the lighter along with a couple of phone batteries (flatish, rectangular li-ion batteries, look on DX), and a "snake's head" design an inch above the focal point of the laser, stopping the beam escaping. then the only safety risk is reflections from something inside the "danger zone" between the diode and the "snake's head" blocker. For that you could have a thick black marker painting the cigarette black as you insert it. Should be almost idiotproof, until someone invents a smarter idiot than I am.

Edit 1:
Battery: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.54

Edit 2:
For such a short range, an IR LED may be more efficient than a laser and won't blow so easily when you overload it, realising it's too inefficient to work properly. However this opens up more risk as it's not a beam but a whole spread you have to worry about.
 
wannaburn said:
Using button cells may be an issue, as the last time I checked they can only provide something like 33ma a piece. A penlight will only allow the batteries to be installed in series, for this reason alone a Zippo housing may be more suitable. You would have to use 4 button cells in series and paralell two packs of the 4, to get a decent current.

Even at 250ma, I cant think of any diodes that will light a smoke.  Definately one of the trickiest builds to ever grace the pages here. I think its time to find my old Zippo ;)
Click to expand...


I read somewhere that some of the newer Blue-tooth ear pieces are being made with built in Lipo batteries. I'm sure there's a source somewhere. A single Lithium Polymer cell, made to utilize the available volume, should be enough to power an IR diode. It'll need a booster circuit for sure, but with surface mount components, it should all still fit.



Interesting note;
Weren't those Sony laptop batteries, that were exploding all over the place last year , lipo batteries?
Now Sony is making bombs electronic devices out of them that you stick in your ear!

-Sure hope they got that whole "exploding fireball and melted chemical outjetting" thing worked out.
 
Indeed sony did, and they sold their cells to Dell, leading to some Dells bursting into flame at important meetings, which certainly livened someone's day up...

http://explodinglaptop.com/images/dell banger1.jpg

The phone batteries have a protection circuit but it won't stop burning embers igniting the battery. Best to keep the body completely sealed and seperate with only a charging port, if you are indeed going to go ahead and build this
 
I just had a revelation, what if , when you made a little place where the cig gets inserted, is replaceable, so when it fogs up and gets messed up it is easily replaceable?
 
Day said:
I just had a revelation, what if , when you made a little place where the cig gets inserted, is replaceable, so when it fogs up and gets messed up it is easily replaceable?
Click to expand...
The solution to this is hold the host so that the hole you stick the cig in is straight up. Then when it starts to smoke, it will escape the host from the gaps between the cig and the host itself.
 
Meh.
I have a really good idea!
But i can't tell anyone yet because i am going to patent it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top