So im going to build a laser "gun"

mccavazos

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So I really messed up my leadlight board trying to do stage 2. The diode (as far as I know) and the mca should still be workable. SO..I was thinking that with a bit of PVC, a little tubing for heatsinking and the right driver baord I could build a laser pointer in the shape of a "gun". But, what driver board should I order. I was thinkinga bout somthing around 500ma to the diode, maybe 450ma to be on the safe side. I noticed that http://www.roithner-laser.com/Drivers.htm has several drivers for sale, and so does: http://www.lasermate.com/driver.htm, but I am unsure of which one to get. Any ideas, or recommendations?

Thanks
Chris

(a quick note, I will NOT be using this gun as a gun or for anything else irresponsible, but more of a novelty case for a laser diode that I can't let sit unused)
 
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Meduza

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Design it like this:

MRST102.jpg
 

mccavazos

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That would be awesome. I was thinking of maybe getting a toy starwars blaster and putting it in that. Any ideas here on what driver I should use?

Thanks!

Chris
 

comozo

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In case you did not know electrostatic discharge can destroy a diode. If memory serves WL has a video of a modded laser Star Wars rifle in case your interested.
 

shawndoe

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Nov 9, 2005
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Hi,

If it were me I'd go with a diode pumped ND:Yag laser with Q-switching in the form of a sawed off 12 guage. Really that is the easy part. However, all portable high power lasers have the same issue, Power. How, much you can store, how quickly you can release it, and how much does it wiegh.
The hard part about building a "phaser" as it were is not the laser, it's the power pack. Picture a 1 Kilowatt beam, even with 50% effeciency that means you need to put out 2KW to the gun and dissapate 1KW of heat. 2KW of power is alot to deliever especailly in package that could fit in a gun. Maybe a Fuel Cell and a canister of compressed natural gas could provide enough juice to fire it for a few rounds, and it might even fit into a backpack.

In the end if you want a small laser gun with any stopping power you need to figure out the power problem.

Have a good one.
Shawndoe
 

AJ_Dual

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I've long had idle thoughts about how to make a man-portable weapons grade laser. Leaving aside all the other issues with optics, beam scattering, and heat, (I've got zero engineering background,) but even I can tell that the power supply problem is enormous.

Even if you turned a 5kW generator into a backpack, and wired it up to a well focused YAG or CO2 laser, you'd lose most of that 5kW to parasitc losses, and all the energy transformations that would be well under 100% efficient.

I keep wondering if some kind of "cartridge" would be possible. A magazine of single-use disposable capacitors with an insanely high dialectric. Or maybe some kind of chemical explosive that crushes a pizeo element, generating a huge burst of current.

Of course, travel too far down that road, you might as well just be using bullets. :)
 

idleprocess

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The motives for building this sort of device go from irresponsible to worse...

'Seems that you could use some big supercaps powered by a large NiCd or NiMH battery pack. The supercaps power your "shots" and the battery pack continuously charges the supercaps. Figure out what the max discharge is for your battery pack then take the inverse of your duty cycle to figure out how much power you can dump in a pulse. 'Figure a 100ms or less per "shot" to keep your power up.

Plus side is that if this is a visible-laser device, you could probably run the diode continuously at low power (<5mW or so) to aim.

Heat will be an issue if you want more than just single-digit watts going into the device. Rumor has it that solid-state lasers generate a bit of heat, and their drivers aren't so efficient.

The military was experimenting with an interesting "generator" several years ago - it could generate megawatts of power for a millisecond or so by detonating some high explosive within a chamber and converting that energy into a pulse of electricity. I don't think that these are available at your nearest hardware store just yet.

Fuel cells have worse energy/power density than batteries right now, and aren't exactly an off-the-shelf item yet either.
 

Athoul

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Oct 5, 2005
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From the posters responses it doesn't look like he is wanting to build a powerful laser gun, but just a neat case for his laser pointer that died.

This site below lists more powerful lasers in gun format. They range from 500mW to 50W CO2.

http://www.accesslaserco.com
 
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