I'm a big believer that eBay is one of the greatest things to come from the
internet age I mean there's always so much interesting and off-the-wall stuff
for sale and besides where else am I gonna get my Soviet military surplus or
fusion laser optics? now unfortunately eBay has a lot of
rules against selling hazardous items and these can be incredibly annoying for
those of us who like to play with dangerous stuff. so that means if you're
looking to buy things like cyanide or depleted uranium you're gonna have to go
to other websites. in terms of lasers eBay bans the sale of handheld laser
stronger than five milliwatts (5mW) now unfortunately this is a lot less than
the power you need to light stuff on fire now this also happens to be the
federal limit in the United States for the sale and import of handheld lasers
so in fact anything stronger than this is actually illegal except under special
circumstances but honestly this isn't even that horrible of a rule because
anything stronger than five milliwatts can do permanent damage to your eyes faster
than you can blink. the other thing is overseas sellers obviously don't care
about our laws but they still do have to follow eBay's guidelines. well it turns
out they actually found a very easy way around these. all they have to do is say
that their lasers are eye safe then they can continue to pump out blinding lasers
to kids all over the world because what could possibly go wrong there? I went on
eBay and bought two blue laser kits for about fifty bucks a piece. now I know what
you're thinking why on earth would I show myself breaking federal law on
video? well I didn't break the law. the listings explicitly stated that the
power output was under five milliwatts I paid money for two low-power legal
lasers and nothing else and to top it off I actually found US sellers for these
kits so in the event that they turn out over powered it shifts the blame to them
because it's not illegal for me to just own a high-powered laser. here I've
opened up the boxes to see what's inside now the lasers themselves are different
styles but the kids are essentially identical. they come with some lithium
ion batteries a charger and some diffraction gratings. now each set also
comes with a pair of laser goggles which is a good idea in theory but you'd have
to be a total idiot to trust these things to protect your eyes. now before I
fire these up I'm gonna put on my own goggles from a legit source cuz I don't
know about you guys but I certainly value my eyeballs a lot more than
whoever found the cheapest way to put together these kits. now personally I
like goggles from survival lasers who know I'm not getting paid to say that I
just simply like their stuff in fact I'll never accept payment to promote any
laser safety gear now that being said sponsors are a great way to fund all my
crazy ideas and projects and I want to give a big thank you to war robots for
sponsoring this video war robots is an awesome strategy 6v6
multiplayer warfare game where two teams battle it out in real time with their
own personalized war machines now the game has amazing 3d graphics and a
huge variety of specialized robots and weapons to choose from help support my
crazy projects by downloading and playing this free game for your phone
download the game using my link below and you'll get a welcome bonus pack
which includes the GI Patton robot and a unique skin for it
you also get a full set of weapons as well as 100 gold and 400,000 silver
which will give you a huge head start when you start playing war robots has
over 100 million players around the world is constantly being updated with
new robots new maps and new weapons you get to choose how the game unfolds as
there's over 50 robots to choose from the weapons that fit whatever play style
you like the developers are even working on a huge new update or you'll be in
charge of a whole squad of pilots with over 20 different characters to choose
from so what do you say let's play alright let's jam in some batteries and
see just how eye safe these things really are and here we go
what the? why won't it work? so it turns out the switch on this thing is complete
and utter garbage but this thing seems to work alright and what can I say
contrary to what it said in the listing eye safe is not how I would describe this
in fact it's probably so far over the safety limit that it's laughable I
definitely would not want to be hit in the eyes by this after a bit more
percussive maintenance I was able to get this laser working again but I wouldn't
exactly count on it lasting a long time so what can I do with these extremely
dangerous lasers? well a lot of things that is if you like setting things on
fire. when properly focused this laser can burn and cut through several
different materials due to the high power density it produces. you can light
matches
it can ignite flash paper. it can cut electrical tape mmm smoked
plastic. now it won't ignite my propane tank but it can pop balloons with ease
that was pretty fun they can also burn your freaking eyes out with ease
nowadays a lot of people get eye injuries from lasers that turn out way
stronger than advertised in fact we should measure just how strong these
lasers really are here I have this really nice pronto laser power meter by
gentec-eo now it'll tell me exactly how strong these lasers are and here we
go so well over a watt there 1.5 watts
actually yeah so it's literally hundreds of times stronger than advertised.
let's check out this other one here mmm so about the same so they're very
very powerful yeah if these things were in a lab they'd have to be bolted to a
table in a locked room and you need hours of laser safety training before
even coming near them so these things are definitely not toys the kits also
come with the set diffraction gratings that are commonly called star caps by
the sellers now they mount on top of the laser and split up the beam to many
different patterns and now I have to admit the effects are downright
beautiful on camera by having several laser beams shooting all over the place
isn't exactly safe some of the individual beamlets can still be
strong enough to cause eye damage even if they're just a fraction of the
initial power of the beam. just 1/3 of 1% of the output is it all it takes to
damage your eyes faster than you can blink. I obviously have nothing against
owning a high-power laser in fact I think lasers are a great hobby but
selling something like this is isafe is appalling now you may think it's obvious
to be careful with something like this but some sellers say that you can use
this for presentations or playing with your cats now that's obviously a
terrible idea as even just looking at the spot on the wall without goggles can
do permanent eye damage. you make just one mistake with one of these and it's
lights out forever. now I know what you're thinking is it possible to make
these even stronger? now the answer is obviously yes although it isn't exactly
easy and you definitely shouldn't do it but honestly at this point
kind of curious what kind of stupid powers I could get out of these if I you
know just tear it down and replace some of the parts inside so yeah without
further ado let's get started here I've laid out my tools to start surgery on
the laser. I'm not ever gonna bother with static protection today because as far
as I'm concerned the laser is already defective. the laser casing comes apart
with ease to expose the internal laser module. and now there could definitely be
improvements to the way this module fits into the casing because as it stands
there's a ton of empty space and poor thermal contact between the laser module
and the case and now before you ask yes the mod I'm about to do is legal for me
as the federal regulations don't ban me from building strong lasers I just can't
import or sell something like this as well as a giant list of other things I
can't do with it. the most power limiting components in this device is definitely
the laser diode now I could just try driving way harder but really this
wouldn't give me that much of a power boost and would probably just fry the
laser diode so I decided to replace the stock laser diode with this much
stronger one and all the stock one is really jammed in there and since I'm not
exactly feeling very patient today I think I'm just gonna knock it out of
there. you know I gotta admit I definitely feel guilty taking a hammer to
Nobel Prize winning technology although I actually think I removed it intact but
I already have hundreds of similar laser diodes in hand so it wouldn't exactly be
devastating if I broke it. I've mounted the new laser diode by press fitting in
a copper heatsink and attaching some leads now I really wish I would have
known about silicone wire when I first started messing with electronics
because it's just so easy to work with and it bends instead of shearing off
connections when it's twisted. here I've had to drill out the hosts a bit to
fit the new heatsink then I added a case wire to bring power through the host
itself to the laser. the puny driver in this thing isn't nearly strong enough to
power the new Beast so I've stripped off all the components
to use as a mount for a commercial buck driver. and now the driver fits on nicely
but unfortunately the anodizing on the host threads prevents the casing from
conducting the way I had intended but luckily just drilling a hole in the
laser module and then directly soldering the case lead here is a really easy fix.
the laser just screws back together at this point now I'm not exactly sure how
the switch is gonna hold up to the higher current demands I'm just gonna
cross my fingers and hope it doesn't explode. you know if I wasn't a lazy piece of
garbage I'll just use a MOSFET to handle the
power switching here. now I guess the last thing to do is swap out the
batteries as these cheap stock lithium ions will not cut the current demands of
the new set up all right let's see if this thing even works but first I'm
gonna fire up this one for reference okay so it's still strong now how about
this one oh wow that's way stronger in fact you hear that little pieces of
the desk are exploding off when the laser hits oh wow
there's actually a little fireball shooting off the surface it's probably
easier for me to see through the goggles than on camera but well that's
ridiculous that's so scary I want you guys to be able to see this fireball
effect so I'm gonna put some goggles over the camera that way you guys have a
better view of what's going on all right here we go
oh wow that's ridiculous that is some serious power it just forms a plasma on
the surface like nothing wow it's amazing that a laser of this power can
be built into a handheld device it's so cool now I feel like the camera just
isn't doing a great job at showing how much stronger this thing is now so I'm
gonna put on the laser power meter alrighty so it's uh okay so it's over
five Watts about five and a half watts so it's actually several times stronger
than what it was originally you know it's funny because I actually
built this thing to be quite a bit stronger than this I was actually
wanting eight watts I guess the driver and battery combination just can't quite
get that laser diode to its full power well I guess now the only tests that are
left are to see what I can burn a destroy so here's a CD case oh wow
that's so fast my goodness it cuts right through it like butter let's see
how fast it'll cut holes through cardboard... or light it on fire that
works too. let's try it against a plastic cup oh wow
it keeps lighting a fire okay this is awesome
yeah look at that it's amazing a while all right here I'm gonna try lighting a
match the hard way so I'm gonna point it here at the matchstick not the actual
match head there and try to get that to catch on fire oh it's almost there
and there it goes cool all right let's give tape another
go Wow slices right through that that's amazing I wonder if it's gonna cut
soldering wire I'm definitely going to get behind my camera's viewfinder for
this one oh that's close oh wow that's amazing I did not expect
to melt something so shiny this one should be easy here's a candle okay a
piece of cake that's like the world's fanciest candle lighter I like it I
wonder what it will do to this cashew mmm I love the smell of roasted nuts
it caught in fire it's so cool all right I got one more
dumb one let's see if it can give my arm a haircut oh oh wow I can feel it
burning the hairs right off the key to not getting third-degree burns is by not
letting it touch the skin oh wow that's awesome that's a high-tech method of
Shaving ouch gosh it's such a shame these things are
so incredibly dangerous because they're really really cool all right so I feel I
may give some mixed messages with this video so I want to clarify a few things
so first off if I didn't beat into your heads earlier these things even
unmodified are incredibly dangerous and I don't recommend buying one in fact if
you're interested in experimenting around with lasers that's awesome
because lasers are very educational hobby and there's so much to learn from
them but don't start with something as powerful as this that is just a that's
just a terrible idea in fact by the time I had built a laser
as strong as this one I tinkered with lasers for over five years and
granted the technology wasn't available to me when I started this hobby but I'm
really really thankful that I had all this time to learn about laser safety
and the basics of handling lasers before I ever messed with something so
extreme all right before I end this video I got to give you guys a tour of my new
shop now I couldn't have gotten this place without all the help from my patreon
supporters and my new sponsors so a big THANK YOU to you guys and since the last
time I posted I've gotten a ton new awesome stuff like all these giant
Soviet vacuum tubes and capacitors and I got more high energy laser optics
and crystals up here there's gonna be so many cool things coming from this
channel very very soon hey it's funny because the only thing that's really
slowing me down at this point is actually shooting the videos I've been
working on so many awesome projects recently. having a 100 amp panel is a
really nice change for my last place because having more power is always a
good thing the videos from my overclocked series on YouTube are
probably most popular right now and believe it or not this is actually just
a driver for the next episode of that series and yeah I got very very carried
away there's parts from like 7 microwaves on there and you're never
gonna guess what I'm using it to power up check out this awesome plug that I
have it's definitely one of my favorite cords I mean look how thick that is
oh yeah it goes to my 100 watt q-switched green laser I've been going
through a ton of microwaves recently and I'm down to just 2 so I'm definitely
gonna need more microwaves i mounted some of my laser guns on the wall over
here. one of these is a moth. that's about it for this video until the next time
stay safe and happy lazing