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FrozenGate by Avery

Laser Shotgun -Our very own Styropyro posted video that made it to Reddits front page

Congratulations Styropyro!

What is the reason you used LM317 drivers to run the diodes, and how did you heatsink the drivers.
Also, how well does the lens focus all the beams into a single point?

It's pretty funny reading all the comments on reddit though, some of them are just :crackup::crackup::crackup:


On the serious side, this comment that 2muchcontext posted on reddit brings the dangers of lasers to our minds, and the absolute necessity of safety.

2muchcontext said:
I can vouch for this (about safety). A friend of mine bought a "lightsaber" online that came with those special glasses. Unfortunately, he got so excited when it arrived that he neglected to put them on, and shined the laser right into a mirror. There was unbearable pain for an instant, and when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see. To this day he's permanently blind.

LATE EDIT: A lot of people doubt this story, and unfortunately I can't prove it, but here is the "lightsaber" he got. Notice how it says that it comes with "LaserShades". (The ones that he didn't put on.
Click to expand...
Can you guess who he got the laser from. yup, our "friends" at WL!

Very good job to Styro for prominently showing and mentioning safety in his videos. +REP for that (as soon as it will let me)! :beer:
 
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Well it made Popular Mechanics, CNET, NBC, Washington Times, New York Daily News, WABC-TV and endless dozens of others, it has also gone global. It has made news in Canada, UK, Ireland, Austrailia, Germany, France, New Zealand, and who knows where else. In the end there will be tens of millions at least who will see or read something about this. Can I have an autographed photo of you Styro? :crackup:

I've read quite a few. CNET says you have almost no common sense:
Let's hope no future Bond villain gets ahold of this laser shotgun - CNET
One of the comments says "I don't know about Bond villains, but I do know that nothing good would come of the neighbor's cat if I had one.":crackup:

This Irish site doesn't say much but is a little hostile:
WTF | Watch: Man builds 'laser shotgun' just because, proceeds to set things on fire with it - entertainment.ie

You've got to see what this one said:
This guy made his own laser shotgun (Video)

This will no doubt bring some publicity to the fact that there are many people building or buying their own lasers. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a large number people find their way to LPF. We may get many new members in the days and weeks ahead, everyone try to be patient with the noobs and be ready to be flooded with the usual noob questions.

Alan
 
Awesome build!

Some of the comments are truly terrifying. I certainly hope some of the commenter's don't figure out how to put these components together, they clearly don't have the intelligence to handle such a dangerous piece of kit. Not all of them anyway.
 
Ha ha thanks for the comments everyone!! There are some hilarious articles out there. I haven't even begun responding to the media inquiries yet but I know a lot of TV shows want to do a segment on it. Honestly I am a bit reluctant...I literally watch no TV and am very disconnected with pop media so I don't want to be on a show that paints us in a bad light. I will put a lot of stipulations if I end up taking these TV deals!

3.5M views...wow...
 
Congrats on the laser, fantastic work!

OTOH I'm not sure it's a good idea to give that much publicity to this hobby. Might prove to be it's downfall...

And BTW, please add some beamshots without the lens. I really want to see what it looks like after some distance :)
 
Atomicrox said:
Congrats on the laser, fantastic work!

OTOH I'm not sure it's a good idea to give that much publicity to this hobby. Might prove to be it's downfall...

And BTW, please add some beamshots without the lens. I really want to see what it looks like after some distance :)
Click to expand...

Why do you think its bad? If anything it brings more people to LPF, who then can learn proper laser safety and the true dangers of lasers. Because lets be honest, people aren't going to up and build their own lasers without doing a bit of research, which 99% of the time leads to LPF :)
 
I think it depends upon how he handles himself during any interviews. From what I've seen he's done fine in the past. My bet is many will find it disconcerting, that someone so young made it which may not be fair but that's the way things are. Haven't looked at any of the reports but I fully expect plenty believe this shouldn't exist.
Personally I'm really not sure what to think other than I don't have the $ to build one myself. Who hasn't wondered what it would be like to have all their units on and aligned to a focal point. Mine would not look cool. More like a jumbled mass of Picasso strangeness.
Someone is going to make a more powerful one and I would like to see it with the 520nm diodes. This one is so bright it's hard to imagine the same lineup of 8 in green.
 
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crazyspaz said:
Why do you think its bad? If anything it brings more people to LPF, who then can learn proper laser safety and the true dangers of lasers. Because lets be honest, people aren't going to up and build their own lasers without doing a bit of research, which 99% of the time leads to LPF :)
Click to expand...

Because 99% of manking doesn't know this is possible (at least not in a DIY way). When they find out, they'll freak out. And governments will turn their attention to the hobby and find more ways to restrict and forbit it. It's one thing to get some tens of thousands of nerds watching but it's something else entirely to get the mass media involved.

I'm not worried about the laser itself, I doubt anyone willing to spend that much and that knows how to build one will want to do anything bad with it.
 
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I agree with the above posts.. on the same token I can go to a walmart and buy a much more destructive device.For example AR-15s, Shot guns, pistols blackbpowder, bows and arrows, axes,all things that are made to destroy for a lot less cost and no engineering involved. I have yet to see a nerd going around with a laser mounted on a swivel blasting away.
 
First: great build !

But it really suffers on the optics side. The main problem is obviously the final lens. It seems to reflect too much, and who knows how much is absorbed in it. Could you measure single beam before and after ?

It would be great to have something better. Like curved mirror. Or maybe individual mirrors for each beam ?

I don't like the 'stacking' method of combining beams .. but rly you had no other option. And you stacked them pretty close. And you also named it 'shotgun' so I really can't complain here :beer:
 
Atomicrox said:
Because 99% of manking doesn't know this is possible (at least not in a DIY way). When they find out, they'll freak out. And governments will turn their attention to the hobby and find more ways to restrict and forbit it. It's one thing to get some tens of thousands of nerds watching but it's something else entirely to get the mass media involved.

I'm not worried about the laser itself, I doubt anyone willing to spend that much and that knows how to build one will want to do anything bad with it.
Click to expand...

You may be right, I think many people know there are lasers you can buy, but am not sure how many know about people building their own, certainly not anything this powerful. Right now there are millions of people who now know.

This is probably a typical reaction from the average person at home in front of their computer:


Alan
 
The media are a bunch of unethical subject matter hacks, if you are interviewed with them be careful, I had PBS interview me on a subject as part of a documentary and they completely took the opposite stance on the issues that I wanted, they will lie to you and manipulate what you say by slicing and dicing pieces of the interview to be what they want it to be.
 
Hmm could you cut the lens apart and make each pie sectins adjustable. The lasers themselves aranged in a circular pattern. The heatsink would look like the cylinders in a colt 45.
 
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