DIY Laser: (almost) out of Star Wars

I could not keep my engineering side at bay for long, even with a malfunctioning soldering station I had to do something. I wound up using my very-sub-par Radioshack (of course) soldering iron until I can get my real station replaced. It was worth the pain of using a Radioshack product, as my most awesome laser yet was created.

I know it as the Uber-Laser, the rest of the world knows it from one too many Star Wars episodes as a Blaster, and isolated tribes in East Africa and my brother know it as, "That shiny thing."


Say hello to my little friend!

I started off with a 3-5 mw green laser pointer I got from Amazon for about $20. I spent a great deal of time taking the assembly off with my diamond cutter (seriously, they really don't want people taking apart their laser pointers), and got it down to just the laser diode and circuit board. I spent another few hours fiddling around with the circuit board until I found something that works, and I managed to get the power output from about ~3 mw to approximately a little less than 100 mw.

I don't really feel comfortable explaining what I did with the circuit board to make this thing shine, for fear of some child blinding himself with the info he got off BW Science Labs. However, I should say that what I DID NOT do is fry the "03" chip with my soldering iron as some crazy Youtube video suggests. I also had to bypass the embedded ON/OFF switch in the circuit board, which took a bit of careful soldering. I then used a 3v power supply, a ridiculously awesome looking switch, and an enclosure to build the rest of the laser module.

I was able to kill 2 birds with one stone (so to speak of course), as I used this laser in my Physics presentation today, where I discussed the National Ignition Facility and how it uses lasers to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. I couldn't tell if my teacher was amazed or terrified by my laser, however it seemed that my peers thought it was pretty darn cool.

At one point a student asked if it could burn anything or start a fire. I was careful to mention that I made this laser to output as much light as possible without actually being destructive enough to pose a danger. And while the pyromaniacs in this world may be disappointed, I still am pretty happy with how this laser functions. At the same time, I feel a bit guilty with the title promising something out of Star Wars, but that's why I put the "(almost)" there.

This laser is incredible at night, and it produces a very solid-looking beam straight out of, dare I say, Star Wars!


Reminder:

While I used phrases like, "fiddling around with the circuit board", I did have a pretty good idea of what I was doing. I also took the proper safety precautions while soldering, and I wore laser safety goggles during testing because I wasn't in the mood to go blind today. If you're not responsible, have little respect for safety (or your eyes), or simply don't know anything about lasers, please find someone smarter who does know what to do, if you try to do this at home. Consider this my disclaimer.