This homemade laser lightsaber can burn through wire

By Kelly Hodgkins Published June 15, 2017

Known for his insane laser creations, laser modder and YouTube personality Drake Anthony, aka Styropyro, is back with a new project in honor of the latest Star Wars movie. To keep up with the growing number of lightsaber DIYs on YouTube, Styropyro decided to join in on the fun by upgrading his 3W handheld lightsaber from a few years ago to an impressive, if dangerous, 7w version. The 7W homemade laser quickly lights things on fire and can blind you instantly and permanently if misused.

Styropyro provides a quick overview of the laser-emitting device in the video, but falls short of detailing how he built it, leaving that information for curious DIYers to find in his earlier videos, the laser-point forums, or other laser-enthusiast sites. The 7W laser lightsaber was created using a blue Nichia GaN laser diode that was overdriven to 7W using a few buck drivers connected in parallel. He added two lithium-ion batteries to power the device and an anti-reflective coated glass lens to focus the beam. With all the parts in hand, he packed the components into a lightsaber-shaped host and assembled a powerful handheld laser that’ll scare and impress people at the same time.

styropyro-laser-lightsaber-wire — Image used with permission by copyright holder

As with most of his videos, Styropyro uses the laser to burn paper, pop balloons, ignite a piece of wood, and even cut through soldering wire. Though remarkable for a handheld device, the 7W device lightsaber is not nearly as impressive as his 40W laser cannon, which uses eight parallel 5-watt laser beams and focuses them into a single 40-watt beam using a lens. The incredibly bright laser is 20,000 times as powerful as most office supply laser pointers, which produce a 2mW beam.

Recommended Videos

For his next project, Styropyro is planning to produce a 160-watt laser bazooka by combining four 40-watt laser diodes. He also wants to build a ruby laser using a 1,350-carat ruby crystal and explosives.

Former Contributor

Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…

Topics

Emerging Tech

Pangram, the gold standard for AI text checks, releases Image 1.0 tool to sniff fake pics and videos

It can identify AI-generated pictures with an astounding 99.96% accuracy on its own evaluation set.

AI image detector tool pangram

Pangram, one of the most widely used and trusted AI text detectors out there, is finally releasing its multimedia detection tools to the masses. Pangram Image 1.0, which was previously available as a research preview, is now widely available on the web, through the company’s API, and via its eponymous Chrome extension.

The company claims its image detector can identify AI-generated pictures with an astounding 99.96% accuracy on its own evaluation set. Pangram also notes that it has improved the model’s accuracy over the past few months, especially against edited images, low-resolution pictures, and pictures made by the most advanced AI models out there. As far as the competition goes, TruthScan achieves an accuracy of 96.33%, followed by AI or Not at 91.38% and Sightengine at 88.33%.

Emerging Tech

Scammers are using AI to fake missing pet photos, and what happens next is horrifying

Criminals are using AI-generated pet photos to convince desperate owners their missing animals have been found, before demanding money and making disturbing threats.

Brown and white cat meowing in Inzoi.

Losing a pet can be heartbreaking, and anyone who's experienced it knows how quickly you'd drop everything if someone called to say they'd found your missing dog or cat. Unfortunately, scammers have learned to exploit that desperation, and AI is making their tricks even more convincing.

A disturbing new scam is targeting pet owners across the UK, with criminals using AI-generated images to pretend they've found missing animals. They then demand money for their return, sometimes going as far as threatening to kill the pets if the owners refuse to pay. According to a BBC report, several pet owners have already experienced these attacks, with scammers using convincing photographs, emotional stories, and increasingly aggressive messages to pressure them into paying.

Emerging Tech

AI can turn your Instagram posts into scam that know a little too much about you

Your public social media posts could be helping scammers create emails that feel personal, and existing AI safeguards aren't doing enough to stop them.

Electronics, Mobile Phone, Phone

We've all received those suspicious emails claiming we've won something, missed a delivery, or need to urgently update our bank details. Most are easy enough to ignore, especially when they're full of strange wording or have absolutely nothing to do with us. But what happens when a scam email actually knows what you've been up to lately? That's where things get a little worrying.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have found that AI can use information people share publicly on social media to create phishing emails that feel personal. And we're not just talking about knowing your name or where you work. These emails can reference things you've recently done, places you've visited, or even something you've been looking forward to. The researchers showed how widely available AI models could gather these details and turn them into targeted messages, potentially letting scammers reach large numbers of people without spending hours researching each person individually.