hey guys on this episode of make it real we're going to be building Zarya's
particle cannon from the game overwatch
now we're super excited bout this project because it's the first make it
real project that we're really focusing on aesthetics we're going to make it
look exactly like it does in the game and it's going to work - now the big
question is how we're going to make it work? You can't exactly make it work
just like it does in the game I mean what is that even in the video game it
is a particle accelerator which we can't exactly build in our garage so instead
we're going to have to use a non-fictional technology something we
have right here in the shop as you guys know I've had a CNC laser cutter for a
few years now and I've actually had quite a few extra laser tubes which I've
been meaning to make a laser bazooka out of for the longest time I think this is
the first time I mentioned it over two years ago
so I ordered a few spare laser tubes for the laser cutter just in case one one goes and I'm not
dead in the water and I also ordered a pair so I'm going to build a laser
bazooka! This co2 laser is a class four industrial laser it's rated at 80 watts
which is over 80 thousand times as powerful as a standard laser pointer
because it's an infrared laser that means it's completely invisible to the
naked eye but that also means it's super efficient at cutting through things
anyway enough talking about it, let's show you what it can do!
all right so we've got all the components we need for buildings Zarya's
particle accelerator now we're actually powering the entire thing off of this
small lithium polymer battery but the power supply for the laser is AC so
we're actually going to be using this power inverter take DC to AC and then
this actually outputs up to 35,000 volts to the laser tube which causes the laser
to fire so even though this laser tube puts out 80 watts of laser power
it actually takes over 400 watts of input power from the power supply here
there's a lot of heat loss which means we actually have to water cool the
entire system and to do that we're using a frozen Q reservoir which is actually
used for computer water cooling systems but enough talking about it let's fire
up this laser but first a few words about safety, safety, safe and safeness
and we have Ian
alright let's plug everything in so 120 volts output to the high voltage power
supply and if you press this button here we have fire alright so as you can see
it's pretty powerful!
and you can use it to cook marshmallows!
okay come on Jordie you're above it you're above it, down! Too long, too long!!!
alright so once we have this project built I think it might actually be the
most powerful infrared handheld laser ever made at least by a hobbyist now if
you guys are big fans of laser projects I encourage you to check out a channel
called Styropyro he's the king of lasers on YouTube and he's actually made
a 200 watt laser shotgun using blue laser modules now from a numbers point
of view it might sound more powerful 200 watts versus 80 watts but because this
is 80 watts of infrared power I think it's actually more destructive but we'd
love to hear Styropyro's feedback on it in the comments below
anyways let's test it out!
Ok ready? 3... 2... 1...
all right so you guys may be wondering about our blatant disregard for laser
safety in this video so far well to be honest we had originally had this plan
to make this overcomplicated helmet where you actual looked through a camera lens
and see everything through a screen which is probably the safest thing you
can do but then we realized normal safety glasses actually absorb infrared
light as well which means they will protect your eyes but not for very long
let's take a look so I'm just going to flash the laser real quick to see if
the goggles protect from a quick reflection of infrared light all right
so as you can see the goggles are fine they're a little burned but at least the
balloon didn't pop now if you were to continue staring right at the laser
through your safety goggles you'd be in trouble let's see what happens working
pretty good that is working pretty good it would take over 10 seconds of staring
directly into this 80 watt laser tube before you burn your eyes out but that
being said we are actually going to order some proper laser grade safety
glasses which actually look quite like normal safety glasses right yes whoa
check that out so if you guys are interested in
learning more about safety goggles and their effective lasers check out this
video here by William Osman, it's awesome!
all right so the big question is how are we going to make this laser tube look
like Zarya's particle cannon, well I'm glad you asked!
so one of the hardest parts about doing a project like this is getting an
accurate 3d model of the actual gun luckily someone on Thingiverse has
already created one they were able to extract the game files from overwatch and
create an STL model of the entire gun which has over 30 individual pieces so
big thank you to kscannon for creating this file and releasing it to
the public on Thingiverse now the tricky part is all these STL files are
individual and we actually have to assemble them together into the complete
models of gun which is why STL files suck if this was actually made in
SolidWorks or something you'd actually have an assembly file and you'd be able
to mount all the files together using mating features whereas what we have to
do with meshmixer is actually placing all by hand which took us quite a few hours!
now that we have the gun assembled we can actually import the components that
we designed into the model now after we place our components inside the model we
can actually use a tool called boolean subtract to cut them out of the existing
files this is a rather processor hungry operation so it's a good thing we have
the origin PC to really chug through that data with all the parts modified we
can now export each STL file compare them to printing now speaking of
printing this is going to take a lot of plastic we initially did a few calculations
with the original models and Thingiverse and we found it's going to use over 17
kilograms of plastic and that's only at a 15% fill density that doesn't even
take into account how long it's going to take to print luckily we reached out to
Lulzbot and told them about the project and they were very happy to support us
they actually sent us 30 kilograms of petg plastic to use for this project in
in addition to sending us 30 kilograms of premium petg plastic they also sent
us a MOARstruder which can print out a layer height of up to one point
two millimeters normal 3d printer typically prints at around 0.25 which
means to print Zarya's particle cannon it would take over a thousand hours but
with a MOARstruder it would only take about 240 hours! In addition to that they also
sent us two more TAZ6's complete with MOARstruders which means we're
going to be able to print this entire thing in just a few days, we've already gotten started!
in the next build video we're hoping to finish this off and make it ready for
the first test all we have to do is finish 3d printing it
then we'll have to sand it painting add the electronics
probably do some more sanding, realize we use the wrong color sand it
again and assembling the gun and it'll be ready to the first test to see that
click here when it comes out but you know what we wouldn't even be able to do
this project it's not for an audience like you, YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!
Thanks for subscribing and stay tuned for the next video!