Laser Trip Wire In An Easy-to-use Form Factor

September 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Rul] built a nice laser trip wire alarm for use in Airsoft matches. Just place the enclosure so that the beam crosses a doorway and it will sound an alarm when the beam is broken. The only problem with this setup is that you need a reflective surface on the opposite side that can be positioned to direct the beam of light back to a photoresistor. But wait, there’s a second option. [Rul] also added a leaf switch that can be connected to an actual trip wire instead of using the laser.

A PIC 16F688 controls the laser module and monitors the photoresistor and leaf switch. When power is first switched on the box goes into a setup mode where it waits until the laser is detected by the photoresistor, switching on an LED to signal that you’ve got the beam aimed correctly. One press of the push-button puts it in activate mode which will sound the hacked window-alarm inside when the beam is broken. A toggle switch lets the operator chose between laser or wire operation.

You certainly won’t miss the alarm when it’s set off. Watch it scare the life out of a poor house cat in the clip after the break.

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Laser Etched PCB Production

September 9, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 42 Comments

Like most of us, [reonarudo] isn’t satisfied with the current methods of homebrew PCBs, so he put a laser on a reprap and started burning some boards.

The basic procedure is to cover a copper clad board with matte black spray paint. A laser was installed on the X carriage of the reprap. [reonarudo] used cad.py to convert the board files into g-code and fired up his laser. The quality of the boards is highly dependent on the accuracy of the laser so after working through some mechanical problems [reonarudo] managed to make some passable boards.

We’ve seen just about every manufacturing method imaginable applied to PCB production. Etch resist and toner transfer do the job and a reprap milling machine is pretty neat, but lasers are so much cooler. While it may not be perfect (yet), printing PCBs with a laser shows a lot of potential. Check out a video of [reonarudo]’s bot burning some copper after the break.

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Incredible 1000 MW Iron Man Repulsor Beam

July 14, 2011 by Mike Nathan 55 Comments

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German lab technician by day, hacker by night [Patrick Priebe] has done it again, this time strapping a ridiculously high-powered laser to the palm of his hand. Earlier this year, we showed you an awesome Neodymium:YAG pulse laser pistol he built, and it seems he never takes a rest from constructing crazy laser projects.

[Patrick] is a huge Iron Man fan, and his palm-mounted laser unit was built as an ode to his all-time favorite super hero. Crafted to invoke images of Iron Man’s repulsor beam, his laser uses a 1000 mw 445 nm laser diode to get the job done. if you happen to be keeping track, that makes his DIY laser just as powerful as the WickedLasers Spyder 3 Arctic – THE benchmark in portable handheld lasers.

Like his previous builds, we can’t seem to find a whole lot of information about the laser’s construction process. We do know however, that the unit was crafted from a 2mm thick sheet of brass, which fits nicely on his hand while simultaneously acting as a very large heat sink. This large surface area allows him to run the laser continuously for three minutes before requiring a cool down, which is no small feat.

We think it’s an awesome project, and as you can see by the videos of the three separate revisions it has undergone, [Patrick] is quite serious when it comes to perfecting his wares.

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How To Build Your Own Pulsed Laser Pistol

July 10, 2011 by Mike Nathan 50 Comments

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Self-declared Mad Scientist and Instructables user [Trevor Nestor] recently built a pulse laser pistol and decided to share his build process, so that you too can build a ray gun at home. The gun is made up of mostly scavenged components, save for the Neodymium:YAG laser head, which he purchased on eBay for about $100. He does say however, that you can score an SSY-1 laser from an old rangefinder, providing you hang out near a stockpile of decommissioned Abrams tanks.

[Trevor] walks you through the process of recycling old disposable cameras to get enough components for a capacitor bank, as well as how the charging circuit should be constructed. He also discusses how the laser head needs to be wired, before showing off the finished laser pistol in a cheeky video, embedded below.

While the gun lacks the finish of this laser pistol we showed you, it’s no less potent when shooting through plastics, wood, and thin metals. It’s a great starting point if you are looking to build a laser of your own, leaving room for improvements, such as a faster charging circuit.

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Making Airsoft Guns Far More Potent

June 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

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[Drake] wrote in to share his recent project, which involves repurposing an Airsoft rifle that was sitting around, collecting dust. Airsoft guns as a whole are not all that impressive, but convert your Airsoft gun into a laser rifle, and we’re all ears.

His laser blaster is honestly pretty straightforward as far as laser projects go, but we just couldn’t resist. He pulled apart the Airsoft gun, removing all of the “airy” bits, leaving just the trigger behind. He added a 9v battery and a linear power supply to the gun, wiring them up to a 700mW laser diode from what we hope was a broken Blu-ray burner.

In the obligatory “look at what I can destroy with my laser gun” video embedded below, [Drake] shows off his gun’s potency at various ranges, popping balloons from 35 feet away. He even shows off the laser’s usefulness as a light pen for glow in the dark surfaces.

While his modifications are nothing we haven’t seen before, his gun is far more accessible than others we have featured.

Have any cool high-powered laser projects of your own? Share them with us in the comments.

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Crosshair Aiming System For Your Laser Cutter

June 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

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[Rich] was having quite a bit of fun with his newly-acquired laser cutter, but was not impressed by the stock aiming laser that came with it. The problem with the built-in laser is that it did not actually follow the cutting laser’s path – instead, it has to be calibrated for a fixed focal length. This becomes problematic when engraving and cutting since they require different focal lengths, so it becomes a guessing game as to where the cutting laser will actually end up in respect to the aiming laser.

An additional optic module that solves this problem can be had for about $300, but after sinking $2500 into the laser setup, [Rich] was not inclined to purchase one. Instead, he bought a pair of cheap laser levels online and scavenged the line lens from one module, which was mounted on the laser cutter’s existing aiming laser. The second module was epoxied to the top of the cutting head, to create a set of cross hairs on the work surface.

As you can see in the video below, the hack works quite well, and the lasers are accurate at a variety of different focal lengths.

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Satellite Tracking By Shining A Laser Into Space

June 11, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 36 Comments

[Shingo Hisakawa] sent in a tip for a for a neat little box called the Levistone that tracks the Internation Space Station with a laser. His video log goes though all the steps for this great little project.

[Shingo] originally planned to pull orbital data down from NORAD and send that to an ArduinoBT board with ethernet, GPS and compass modules. In the original plan, the Arduino would do the orbit calculations and point the laser using a few servos. There wasn’t much success with making an Arduino do all the work, so the an Android phone stood in for the GPS, compass and connection to the web. The duty of calculating the location of the ISS using GPS and orbital elements was moved onto the Amazon EC2 cloud. The final product looks great, even if it’s impossible to record the beam for the video.

With the ability to calculate the azimuth and elevation of the ISS from any point in the world, [Shingo] came up with SightSpaceStation, a neat mashup of his data and Google Maps. There are also iOS and Android apps for a nice piece of work in augmented reality. It’s a great project that would really compliment the ISS desk lamp we covered a few days ago.