this video is sponsored by surfshark vpn. hey everybody recently i was browsing around
on the weird side of ebay when i came across some interesting laser gadgets in the health
and beauty section now you'd probably think this stuff here would be pretty benign well at least
compared to what i'm used to buying on ebay but i mean some of this stuff is really concerning i
mean these things are advertised to do procedures that typically require huge lasers so that means
that either these things are fake or they're extremely dangerous now naturally i had to find
out for myself what kind of lasers we're dealing with here so i bought a few to test out for this
video oh yeah before i go on i should warn you that all the crazy stuff you're about to see was
done completely for educational purposes i mean if DIYing medical treatment wasn't sketchy enough
then doing it with some mystery device that was made without any regards to safety regulations
is a big no-no so yeah please don't try this at home all right let's start with this one
this is the neat cell spot removal laser which is apparently an amazing all-in-one cosmetic device
this thing can apparently remove moles tattoos freckles warts and pretty much any blemish you
can think of and all for only forty dollars wow what a deal now is this thing actually legit or
is it just the led equivalent of essential oils? well one way to find out. this is all what came
with the kit here you got the main device right here a power supply these goggles and then uh
these instructions now as a general rule i don't trust goggles that come with cheap kits like these
so i'll be using my own to test this thing out now there really isn't any assembly here
i mean the thing just turns on when i plug it in now i guess uh i guess this changes the
power here and then this changes uh i guess the frequency well here goes nothing oh no
no okay this is one of the worst ideas i've ever seen make into a commercial product like where
do i even start this thing is just a powerful blue laser diode jammed in a pen style casing
which honestly isn't even that much different than many of the lasers i've shown on this channel
but using this as a cosmetic device there are so many issues with that let's start with a laser's
color blue light tends to be strongly absorbed by skin which means you end up dumping most of
the laser's power into healthy skin tissue this is a big problem as the whole idea is to not destroy
your skin as you target an unwanted blemish like a tattoo it's not like this thing is weak either it
clearly packs a lot of power it can easily light matches as well as burn a bunch of other materials
so what can this thing do to skin well can't hurt to try right heck ow yeah that wasn't
pleasant at all i can't imagine how awful it would feel trying to laser off an entire tattoo
with something like this best case scenario you replace the tattoo with a horrific scar
worst case scenario well there's a lot of worst case scenarios here believe it or not the burn
hazard is not the biggest risk here as usual with powerful lasers the real risk is instant permanent
blindness in fact let's test the average output power with my laser power meter by gentec eo
okay so a little under a watt that puts in the highest laser danger category there is
which means just looking at the spot on your skin can burn your eyes out without goggles speaking of
goggles let's take a look at the goggles that came with the laser huh look at that they're completely
opaque you can't see anything through them how are you supposed to operate the laser if you can't see
anything well that's the thing these aren't meant for you they're meant for your patience
this thing is advertised to treat basically everything including common facial blemishes
like acne and freckles pointing this thing at your face is just asking to go blind and
that's ignoring the fact that this thing would likely give horrible scars on your face as well
oh yeah one more thing why is the laser flashing like that well it turns out that pulse lasers are
preferred for a lot of dermatology treatments as it allows a target to be destroyed faster than
the heat produced can diffuse out and damage other tissues however there's one problem with that the
listing claims that the laser can do picosecond pulses which would be an incredible feat for a
laser of this size it turns out though that the pulses are a little over a tenth of a second
which is not only too slow to make much of an effect here but it also means that the seller's
claim is off by a factor of over 100 billion i'm legitimately impressed on how many bad ideas were
jammed into the single device i mean this thing's a stain on our species but seriously though if you
know anybody with one of these or something similar please tell them to get rid of it
immediately this product is alarmingly popular and has serious potential to cause permanent injury
for the record there are similar products out there with different names and some versions use
a near ir laser instead of a blue one these are all likely to be just as awful as the one i tested
to make matters worse simply looking up info on laser tattoo removal means you'll probably get ads
for this terrible device or maybe you'll just say in a facebook message that you regret a tattoo and
next thing you know the entire internet is trying to sell you one this is a dangerous side effect
of being cyber stalked by massive corporations because they'd much rather sell you this trash
than refer you to a doctor now luckily there's an easy way around this in fact i'd like to introduce
you to my sponsor surf shark surfshark's clean web service is a great way to get rid of these
intrusive ads even if you aren't swayed by dangerous medical ads simply blocking this
content can give faster browsing as well as save on data of course this is just a small fraction
of what surfshark has to offer there are a lot of reasons why somebody might find a vpn useful but
my main use is for bypassing throttling isps are notorious for slowing your speeds when you visit
streaming sites like youtube ever have youtube slow to a crawl when other sites work just fine
there are a lot of possible reasons why this might happen but there's a good chance it's
from throttling surfshark is my best tool to combat this geospoofing is another popular use
of surf shark because it's an easy way to bypass censorship content not available in my country
no problem i'll just use surf shark to virtually put my computer in a country where it is available
to top it off surf shark is the only vpn to allow account use on unlimited devices
use my code styropyro to get 83 off in an extra three months free the link's in the description
below and there's a 30 day money back guarantee so you can try it out at no risk to yourself
so yeah i want to give a big thank you to surf surfshark for sponsoring this video
alright on to the next one this system is advertised to do pretty much the same thing
as the last laser except this one's 10 times more expensive and obviously a lot bigger i've already
made an entire video on this ridiculous system in the past but since this is a video on sketchy
diy medical lasers i'm obligated to break this thing out again there's a lot more to this kit
than the last one for one the laser head here is separate from the power supply then you have all
this other gear here i got a foot switch here you got these tips here that change the lasers
output color i got some actual operator goggles as well as the patient goggles i got this funnel for
adding cooling water and this treatment cream here so what's so different about this one compared
to the pen laser if they're both supposed to treat the same thing well pretty much everything
unlike the last one which was a diode laser this is an old-school flashlamp pumped laser that uses
Nd:YAG as the lasing medium in fact it's quite similar to the first lasers ever built in that
regard don't let the old tech fool you though this is an absolutely terrifying laser in fact
it's so powerful that it trashed the sensors on the cameras i used to film it and that's without
even taking a direct hit the peak output power here is millions of watts which is powerful enough
to ignite air at the focal point and blow craters in a block of tungsten for those that watch the
original video of mine you might remember that i blew up the flash lamp while trying to make
it stronger in my defense i bought the laser used and the lamp was already near end of life
luckily it was easy to score a replacement lamp and get the laser back to working order
of course it's hard to find words to describe the eye hazard of a laser like this by far the
biggest flaw with this kit is that the goggles sent with it are totally useless for the laser
the fact that you can still see green light coming through them means there's no protection here
plus as my camera shows you don't need to point it directly in your eye for it to cause irreparable
damage in fact a set of high od wraparound goggles that actually protect you from the laser will cost
nearly as much as the laser itself on the flip side the nerd in me is really impressed that a
q switch jag laser system with relatively high pulse energy can be bought for dollars i mean
seriously you'd be hard-pressed to beat that price if you build a similar system on your own
the laser is clearly good at blowing craters into things but is it any good of the treatments it's
advertised for well it depends now i should be careful how i say this but i do think a trained
operator could use this system to remove some types of tattoos i mean the short pulses and
wavelength options are similar to what you'd find in some professional systems unlike the last laser
this system produces extremely short pulses on the order of 10 billionths of a second this allows
the laser to obliterate tattoo pigments while leaving the surrounding skin relatively unharmed
that being said the reason it's so cheap is because safety regulations were not taken
into account while designing this this thing is nowhere near an ideal system i mean the controls
are very inaccurate and sometimes the laser just shoots out random pulses for no reason at all
to top it off even a professional system in the hands of an untrained operator is bound
to leave lots of scarring in whoever gets used on this system isn't just advertised
to remove tattoos it also claims to be able to remove eyebrows and skin blemishes now eyebrows
in case it isn't obvious pointing a million white laser at your face isn't a great idea
but the thing is this isn't even a good system for removing hair there are lasers that can do that
but they have much longer pulse lengths which are more ideal for blowing up hair follicles
aside from the intended purposes for the laser this thing can pull off some pretty
crazy experiments the power density at the focal point is so high that it'll actually ignite air
plus with the frequency doubling tip the laser is transformed into a scary powerful green laser
and then that can be used to excite organic dyes to the point that they operate as a laser as well
compared to the last kit this one is certainly more impressive i mean other than the astronomical
blinding hazard it could probably be used by a trained operator to remove some types of tattoos
it would still be a terrible idea to use it on yourself though alright what do we have next
oh yeah how about this laser plasma thing this one is supposed to remove a lot of
the same blemishes as the other systems but this one is by far the cheapest of the bunch
at a little over five dollars it's also the most mysterious one no instructions came with the thing
just the device and some needle attachments i have no clue how i'm supposed to use it
honestly this doesn't look like a laser at all i mean if this is supposed to be the output
it certainly isn't visible light that it produces well let's turn this thing on
um is it even oh okay yeah so okay that must be activated and this has to be the output huh
heck what is this thing i mean it's definitely not a laser there's no visible output but it
definitely burns or shocks or something wow yeah so it can definitely burn but the tip
itself isn't hot so it's got to be producing high frequency electricity to burn like that okay check
this out since it can light up this neon bulb this thing has got to be producing relatively
high voltage i mean these things don't light up until you're close to 100 volts or so okay this
is really impressive so this is a nixie bulb here and look at that it lights the whole thing up i
can even do it capacitively straight through the glass wow yeah that is really really cool
i've played with it a bit more now and i've noticed that it seems to produce an arc to
objects that have a bit of capacitance to them it's actually kind of fun engraving anodized
metals with it when the power's cranked up plus i can use it to draw silly things on an apple
alright so it's a lot of fun for screwing around with but is it of any use for burning off skin
blemishes well the thing is high voltage high frequency sources do get used in medicine to burn
off skin blemishes they don't exactly look like this though the idea itself is pretty cool though
because at high enough frequencies the polarity flips faster than nerve cells can be depolarized
this is why it can burn but not shock of course that speaks nothing about the safety of this thing
now that being said i do want to try removing a scar just to see how well it works this scar
right here seems to cause me a lot of problems in my social life all right here goes nothing oh heck
why do i do this stuff oh oh this sucks oh my gosh oh it smells so bad
oh that was extremely unpleasant now i'm too impatient to wait and see what this thing turns
into but judging by how that felt it's got to make whatever blemish you have much worse
now there could also be a risk of deep tissue burns here i'm curious what's actually inside
this thing so i'm going to tear it apart wow the fda and fcc would have a stroke over this
what is this a slayer exciter circuit i mean the burns from this thing feel
a lot like the burns my slayer cider gives me ow hmm i wonder
i'm kidding
well i certainly don't recommend this for any sort of medical or cosmetic use
and this thing definitely isn't a laser like the listing said
however it still may be useful as a portable high frequency source for lining up gas tubes
all right what do we have left well a lot of things but i'm just going
to skip to this monstrosity this is a huge surgical laser that came out of a hospital
now i'll be honest it's not totally fair to include this one in the video because it was
never marketed for diy use now that being said it is still a medical laser i did buy on ebay
and i like a lot of medical goodies this one ended up on the surplus market when its licensing
expired and a newer laser tech became available now i knew this thing was 150 grand but thanks
to ebay i bought this one for 500 bucks this thing can do over 100 watts average of green light which
makes it by far the brightest laser that i own the peak output power is many thousands of watts
pump and dump baby
100 watts of green light is so bright that it's hard to capture on camera
so as a comparison here i have a 1.6 watt green laser that i threw together recently
now obviously this thing is extremely bright i mean it lights up my entire shop
now let's take a look at what this looks like compared to the surgical laser
pretty crazy right that makes this thing look like nothing as expected this thing can tear
through a lot of materials as it was designed for blowing up flesh in a surgical setting
this laser actually has a lot in common with the big tattoo laser they're both lamp pumped
frequency doubled Nd:YAG lasers but this one uses an arc lamp instead of a flash lamp this
means the output is more or less continuous i see more or less because this laser is actually pulsed
it just looks continuous because the rep rate is so high believe it or not that thing is only
outputting light about one percent of the time but it's doing so in pulses that exceed 10 000 watts
the lamp actually stays on the entire time here but these pulses are generated via q switching by
an acousto optic modulator this kills the gain of the cavity for a brief period to allow the
YAG crystal to build up energy then it restores the gain for a moment to allow the energy to be
released all at once in a powerful pulse of light these pulses have two functions for one they're
preferred over cw and many surgical applications involving ablating tissues but it also makes
the conversion step from ir to green much more efficient and this is due to the gigantic power
density contained in the frequency doubling crystal the pulses are being generated many
thousands of times per second and in fact you can hear the pulses when i stick something in the beam
that hum is actually due to the laser pulses inducing vibrations in the material
this laser was not plug and play like the other ones in fact the manufacturer put
considerable effort to prevent people like me from being able to use it
obviously that wasn't able to stop me but it wasn't exactly due to genius on my part the first
issues i encountered were probably due to the fact that this thing sat in storage for several years
a water cooling line exploded and soaked the electronics inside the first time i powered it up
i replaced some bad fittings and then let it dry for a while before firing it up again
surprisingly it still started up just fine after this but even so the onboard computer prevented
the system from making any output without being fed service cards this meant that i needed to
either build my own crude lamp supply for the laser or just find a way to hack the onboard
computer the first option would be painstaking and sub-optimal so the second option was by far
preferred i don't exactly get along with digital electronics but thankfully i knew just who to ask
for help with this my friend kevin who's the owner of starlight photonics has spent considerable time
reverse engineering the surgical laser and has even developed a board that overrides the original
controls i bought one of these boards from him and sure enough it worked super well i just had to
solder a few connections and after that i had full control over the system i can adjust a bunch of
parameters like lamp current and q switch rate as well as monitor the water temperature and pressure
his board plus this surgical laser gives an unbelievably low cost way of attaining a 100 watt
green laser system i don't usually recommend ebay sellers but this is an exception i've bought from
starlight photonics for many years and i've gotten a lot of cool parts for my projects from them
now obviously attaining a 100 watt laser system as new experimenter is a terrible idea but for
research projects on a budget it's a pretty hard deal to beat now i could go on for hours and all
the weird stuff i've bought on ebay but at that point it really isn't in line with the original
topic here the main takeaway is that none of these gadgets are safe to use on yourself honestly it's
really disturbing on how many of these gadgets get sold in such high volumes to clueless customers
that's not to say i don't see the appeal here though i mean for somebody who's looking to get
rid of a blemish but they're embarrassed or can't afford treatment they might look into getting one
of these products and to be fair there's not much info out there if you're trying to find
safety concerns and to make matters worse there's probably a lot of fake reviews out there as well
none of these gadgets are safe but the real loser in this bunch is the neatcell.
this thing is an absolute disgrace if there's any gadget that should be wiped from sites like
amazon or ebay it's this one shame on whoever put this thing on the market well i guess that's about
all i have for you today i do want to thank surf shark again for sponsoring this video so be sure
to check out the link in the description so yeah until the next time stay safe and happy lasing