[Cyborg] DIY pulsed laser pistol

[Nick Burrows]

If you get a laser designed for pulse operation, its not that bad. Yag
lasers are very easy to find that can do pulses. Ebay has a Yag pulse laser
that does 50kW for 4ns (0.2J) for $150. For pulse lasers, the thing that
really matters is how big the pulse is in Joules and what wavelength its on.

The continuous lasers I have at work can pulse up to 4x their nominal rated
power (nominal rating ~4kW), just as long as I don't exceed the average
power rating. Pulse lasers are equipped with a different type of cooling
than CW (continuous) laser to better handle the heat spike generated by
large pulses (also coatings and lenses may change).

See http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/laserscl.htm#sclsy1 if you are
interested in how to drive a pulse yag laser (very similar to camera flash)

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Eric Boyd <mrericboyd at yahoo.com> wrote:

> via slashdot, so many of you have probably seen this:
>
>
> http://hackaday.com/2011/03/10/youll-shoot-your-eye-out-with-a-1mw-laser-pulse-pistol/
>
> It's incredible.  It's basically a blaster, like Han Solo has in Star
> Wars.  This guy is totally right when he says you should never fire it
> without laser eye protection though - this thing would blind for sure,
> even specular reflections of specular reflections would have enough
> power to blind...
>
> The most interesting thing?  He claims in the youtube comments that it
> costs about $1000 to make one, plus 70 hours of time.  That's scary.
> The required laser safety glasses cost nearly that much themselves!  I
> wonder what the expected lifetime of the laser is, presumably he's
> massively overpowering it for those 100ns...
>
> Eric
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