Laser Hacks

653 Articles

Laser Beam Modding

May 14, 2007 by 5 Comments


The laser community forums have a nice primer on basic laser effects. [Steve] thought I’d really be interested in this sweet prototype dual laser saber. It’s a custom piece that uses a wicked laser pointer (You can use any laser, but those happen to be damn powerful) and a polycarbonate blade(tube/rod) to create the hallowed light saber effect. (Now I know what I want for christmas.) Mcmaster-carr carries polycarbonate rod and tube if you want to make your own,

Webcam Laser Rangefinder

April 14, 2007 by 19 Comments


This has been around for a while, but I thought it deserved some attention. [Todd] used a laser pointer, a webcam, some trig and (sigh) some windows development tools to create his own laser range finder. Given the position of the beam strike and that the camera is located at a right angle to the laser, calculating the distance is pretty simple. This could be handy if you’re building a bot for defcon…

Build Your Own Laser Spectrograph

March 16, 2007 by 23 Comments


The news is awash about a 17 year old girl who won a $100,000 scholarship for her spectrograph, but nobody actually linked to information about the thing. After some digging around, I located [Mary]’s web site. It’s a work in progress, but I found an early version of her spectrograph build. The picture shows her project with a spectrograph head made for a meade telescope. Hopefully she’ll get documentation of her spectrograph head up soon. This is one of the better uses I’ve seen for a 5mw green laser.

I forgot to mention her sweet dobsonian telescope build. Very nice work.

Micron Laser Beam Analyser

February 17, 2007 by 4 Comments


[David] sent in his laser beam analyzer project. It’s a complete analysis system built from off the shelf hardware. Even if you’re not into lasers, the project combines several technologies that are useful for the hardware hacker. A laser beam is focused to shine onto a spinning reflector. Beam signal is attenuated by adjusting the distance with a stepper actuated sled. The beam is then measured using various sensors.

I thought we were due for a laser hacks category, so I created it and added some of the older laser hacks to it.

Coilosapien: Rail Gun On Yer Robot

February 13, 2007 by 23 Comments


It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything new on the robosapien front, but I’d say that a laser sighted rail gun for our favorite robots is worthy. From the video, it appears to have decent accuracy and a fair sized clip. It’s creator, [Marcus] says that he’ll have a tutorial up soon. Thanks to [Robert] for the tip. (Update: The tip says it’s a mini rail gun, so I’m not sure if it’s a rail gun or a coil gun.)