Phasers come with two settings: stun and kill. [Luke] took this seriously when he put two Blu-ray lasers into a toy raygun. He picked up the toy from Amazon for about twenty bucks and set to work.
The laser diodes are both pulled out of a 6x BD-R burner, which we think is a pretty expensive source to scavenge from. [Luke] removed the toy circuitry, reusing the trigger, top switch, and battery pack. The two diodes are mounted on a swiveling carriage which is turned 180 degrees to switch between the two diodes. A boost driver converts the 3v from the batteries up to 7v for the diodes.
[Jay] hacked a Blu-Ray laser diode into a keychain enclosure. He found a heavy brass keychain light from Lowe’s and stuffed the diode and a larger battery inside. The existing batteries weren’t powerful enough, so he drilled out the endcap to fit a 200mAh 3.6v lithium battery inside. He also modded the power button to only momentarily turn on the diode. With the larger battery, the laser can run for about an hour between charges. In addition to a Blu-Ray lasers, he also has versions with a 200mW red diode.
For organic semiconductors like the very common organic light-emitting diode (OLED), the issue of degradation due to contaminants that act as charge traps is a major problem. During the development of OLEDs, this was very pronounced in the difference between the different colors and the bandgap which they operated in. Due to blue OLEDs especially being sensitive to these charge traps, it still is the OLED type that degrades the quickest as contaminants like oxygen affect it the strongest. Recent research published in Nature Materials from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research by Oskar Sachnik and colleagues (press release) may however have found a way to shield the electron-carrying parts of organic semiconductors from such contaminants.
Current density (J)–voltage (V) characteristics of electron- and hole-only devices of 3CzTrz and TPBi. (Credit: Oskar Sachnik et al., 2023)
In current organic semiconductors TPBi is used for electron transport, whereas for this research triazine (Trz, as electron acceptor) and carbozole (Cz, as donor) were used and compared with the properties of leading-edge TPBi. While a few other formulations in the study did not show remarkable results, one compound (3CzTrz) was found using X-ray diffraction (XRD) to have a structure as shown on the right in the heading image, with the carbozole (in blue) forming essentially channels along which electrons can move, while shielded from contaminants by the triazine.
Using this research it might be possible to create organic semiconductors in the future which are free of charge-traps, and both efficiency and longevity of this type of semiconductor (including OLEDs and perovskites) can be improved immensely.
Thanks to stints as an X-ray technician in my early 20s followed by work in various biology labs into my early 40s, I’ve been classified as an “occupationally exposed worker” with regard to ionizing radiation for a lot of my life. And while the jobs I’ve done under that umbrella have been vastly different, they’ve all had some common ground. One is the required annual radiation safety training classes. Since the physics never changed and the regulations rarely did, these sessions would inevitably bore everyone to tears, which was a pity because it always felt like something I should be paying very close attention to, like the safety briefings flight attendants give but everyone ignores.
The other thing in common was the need to keep track of how much radiation my colleagues and I were exposed to. Aside from the obvious health and safety implications for us personally, there were legal and regulatory considerations for the various institutions involved, which explained the ritual of finding your name on a printout and signing off on the dose measured by your dosimeter for the month.
Dosimetry has come a long way since I was actively considered occupationally exposed, and even further from the times when very little was known about the effects of radiation on living tissue. What the early pioneers of radiochemistry learned about the dangers of exposure was hard-won indeed, but gave us the insights needed to develop dosimetric methods and tools that make working with radiation far safer than it ever was.
On vacation, we went to see a laser show – one of the old school variety that combines multiple different lasers of many different colors together into a single beam, modulates them to create different colors, and sends it bouncing off galvos to the roof of a planetarium. To a musical score, naturally.
When I was a kid, I had no idea how they worked, but laser shows were awesome. As a younger grownup hacker, and after some friends introduced me to the dark arts, I built my own setup. I now know how they work from the deepest innards out, and they are no less awesome. Nowadays, you can get a capable set of galvos and drivers for around a hundred bucks from the far east, it’s fair to say that there’s no magic left, but the awesome still remains.
At the same time, lasers, and laser shows, are supremely retro. The most stunning example of this hit me while tearing apart a Casio projector ages ago to extract the otherwise unobtainable brand new 455 nm blue laser diodes. There I was pulling one diode out of an array of 24 from inside the projector, and throwing away the incredibly powerful DSP processor, hacking apart the precision optical path, and pulling out the MEMS DLP mirror array with nearly a million little mirrors, to replace it with two mirrors, driven around by big old coil-of-wire electromagnets. Like a caveman.
But still, there’s something about a laser show that I’ve never seen replicated – the insane color gamut that they can produce. It is, or can be, a lot more than just the RGB that you get out of your monitor. Some of the colors you can get out of a laser (or a prism) are simply beautiful in a way that I can’t explain. I can tell you that you can get them from combining red, blue, green, cyan, and maybe even a deep purple laser.
What you get with a laser show pales in comparison to the multi-megapixel projectors in even a normal movie theater. Heck, you’ve really got one pixel. But if you move it around fast enough, and accompany it with a decent soundtrack, you’ve still got an experience that’s worth having while you still can.
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Here’s a fun quick hack from [Timo Birnschein] about using the 3D laser engraving (or ‘stamp’ engraving) mode of certain laser cutter toolchains to create a handy countersink shape in a laser-cut and engraved workpiece. Since [Timo] uses a small laser cutter to cut out and mark project boards for their electronics builds, having an extra messy, manual countersinking operation with subsequent clean-up seemed like a waste of time and effort, if the cutter could be persuaded to do it for them.
Designs are prepared in Inkscape, with an additional ‘3D engraving’ layer holding the extra processing step. [Timo] used the Inkscape feathering tools to create a circular grayscale gradient, leading up to the central cut hole (cuts are in a separate layer) which was then fed into Visicut in order to drive the GRBL-based machine, However, you could do it with practically any toolchain that supports laser power control during a rastering operation. The results look perfectly fine for regions of the workpiece not on show, at least, but if you’re only interested in the idea from a functional point of view, then we reckon this is another great trick for the big bag of laser hacks.
Do you dream of building a curvy ergonomic keyboard or macro pad, even though the idea of hand wiring gives you nightmares? You can make it a bit less troublesome with a tiny PCB for each key switch, as long as you have a reflow oven or you’re okay with a bit of surface-mount soldering for the diode, LED, and capacitor.
As a bonus, these should make switches a bit more secure against movement, and you could probably even get away with using hot swap sockets if you wanted. [Pedro Barbero] has the Gerber files available if you want to get some fabbed. We sort of wish we had used these on our dactyl, though the case is awfully tight and they might not fit.
Ultra-Mechanical Keyboard Angles with Lifter Motors
Lots of people prefer an angled keyboard, but plenty of new keebs, especially mechanical ones, just don’t offer that at all. Well, the wait for an adjustable 75% is over, at least. Okay, that’s not exactly true. The wait for a group buy to begin for an adjustable 75% is almost over.
Nestled in between the arrow cluster and the menu key of the Besides Studios M-One is a rocker switch that angles the keyboard from 3° to 7° slowly but surely, like an adjustable bed. This is going to be a bare-bones group buy, meaning that it won’t come with any switches, stabs, or keycaps, but that doesn’t mean it will be cheap at $299. [BadSeed Tech] got an early prototype and built it out with Gateron Ink Black V2 switches in the video below in order to give it a proper spin.
