Alright, today we’ve got two different methods of making your own burning laser pointer at home in very little time at very little or even absolutely no expense whatsoever (if you’ve already got a low-power green laser pointer you can modify you won’t have to spend a penny). The first one presumes that you’ve got a low-power green laser pointer (these are relatively inexpensive these days–cheapest one I see on Amazon is this one for $14.92) that you’re going to modify by disassembling it and disabling the
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power-limiter component on it with a soldering iron (you need a soldering iron, yes). The second one shows you how to construct a very powerful laser pointer out of a small Maglite flashlight (the kind that runs off of 2 AA’s) and the laser diode from a DVD burner. This one happens to be my favorite because it’s SO easy to get ahold of a DVD |
drive (must be able to write/burn DVD’s) for either VERY cheap or for free–if you’ll get a broken one from a dump or off Ebay, odds are excellent that the diode works just fine and it’s something else that’s broken, those diodes almost never break, it’s almost always some type of moving part (i.e. a motor) within the drive that broke, or you can just buy a used-but-working one for VERY little.
Method #1: Modified low-power green laser pointer
Here’s the first method. Remember, you’re going to need:
- An inexpensive low-power green laser pointer.
- A pair of pliers (he uses a pair of needle-nose ones)
- A set of micro screwdrivers.
- A soldering iron.
Here’s what to do:
Method #2: Modified DVD burner diode + Maglite
One of the cool things about this one is that DVD drives use several different colored lasers, depending on how old your drive is and
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what brand it is, it could be either green, blue, or red (as show in the video). I suspect you could get this to run off of any type of flashlight that you want, including some of the bigger Maglites, but I don’t know why you’d want to as the small AA one is perfect for this. |
Here’s what you’ll need:
- A small Maglite (takes 2 AA’s–they sell these things EVERYWHERE, very cheap like 5 or 10 bucks or so).
- A DVD burner (he says 16x, I suspect you could go lower or higher and as long as it can actually BURN DVD’s, it’ll work).
- A set of micro screwdrivers.
- A housing for the laser (you can get the one he recommends here)
- Soldering Iron
Here’s what to do:
Additional Resources and Further Reading
The best place to go for research and asking questions about doing this sort of stuff is the Candlepower Lasers Forum.
Instructables.com has a whole area dedicated to laser pointer projects that’s got tons of stuff in it with 232 members as of now.
HacknMod.com has a really cool pages with 6 different laser pointer projects/hacks.
13 responses so far ↓
1 nix // Oct 31, 2009 at 6:55 pm
i found laser and all things i need Except driver…where to gind that???
2 nix // Oct 31, 2009 at 6:55 pm
where to get*
3 Mind Blaster // Dec 19, 2009 at 4:08 am
4 alex // Jan 19, 2010 at 2:27 pm
soo i bought a green laserpointer 5mw 532 nm i assume and its a little different than your laser in your video im trying to find the component to heat up to make it a 100 mw green laser was very interested in your project, cant seem to find wut to heat up not sure what Q1 C2 R4 R5 and R8 mean help please.
5 Are these people for real? // Jan 24, 2010 at 7:20 pm
[...] useing dialup, if you want to you can wait for this video to load or you can try this similar site: the site) what i want to know is who do these people think that they are fooling??? (if this is for real [...]
6 gary // Jan 25, 2010 at 8:19 pm
the first method where u turn the green lazer into one by tightening the screw and burning the one part, will that work with a cheep little 2 dollar red lazer from walmart? runs off of four little watch-battery like things?
7 Randall // Jan 31, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Alex, the laser he used will probably have different markings than your laser. Gary, I just dissasembled my $2 laser and, no, it won’t work.
8 Alex // Feb 26, 2010 at 1:21 pm
ok i was just wondering about the screwdrivers on the second one if there is a specific set that would help more than another?
9 Andrew // Feb 26, 2010 at 5:55 pm
No, just a set of mico-sized screwdrivers like the kind you would use on eyeglasses–hardware stores will all carry them.
10 Alex // Mar 2, 2010 at 1:54 pm
ok thanks for the help
11 kyle // Mar 11, 2010 at 8:45 am
Which diode # do I have to burn out. Your video was a little blurry to see which one it was. I have a green laser pointer that uses 2 aaa’s
12 Tominator // Mar 12, 2010 at 11:26 am
That was totaly wicked. :happy:
13 Tominator // Mar 12, 2010 at 11:27 am
That was pownawesome:cool:
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