you'd be amazed with the crazy crap that
you can build using a pile of broken
microwaves some eBay electronics and a
couple precision objects case in point
my new Ruby laser so I know it's been a
long time coming for me to post this
video but honestly I just wasn't happy
with the footage that I was getting but
this is still an amazing laser so I hope
you enjoyed today's video I'll save the
more detailed explanation on how I built
this laser for a later video but for the
time being here's a quick rundown of
what's all inside this laser so I start
by feeding wall voltage into this
circuit breaker which then feeds it to
this very act which gives me adjustable
voltage and from there it goes into
these resident microwave oven
transformers or send feeds into this
Cockcroft wall and voltage multiplier
that also takes the AC voltage and
converts it to DC and then I feed it
into a little inductive choke there and
then also into this disconnect switch
and then finally all that electricity
goes inside this massive capacitor bank
and this is where all the energy gets
stored now this capacitor bank can store
something like 20 kilojoules and if you
don't know much about electronics
there's a lot of energy that is a very
very dangerous amount of energy and in
fact I mean if you touch that that's any
of those down there that right there
while it's like you're killed instantly
I mean you're a course before he hit the
floor so this is definitely not
something that you can mess around with
it's a very very dangerous device inside
that laser is a giant flash lamp now
it's a lot like a camera flash
except it's many thousands of times
stronger but in fact it's always hooked
up to that capacitor bank there the
charge just doesn't flow through it
because it's usually not conductive but
in order to make it conductive so I can
fire it I built this trigger circuit
here using a 555 timer some a mosfet and
then some protective components and then
a ignition coil from a car so let me hit
it here
that's like probably close to fifty
thousand volts
it's enough to ionize a xenon inside
that lamb to make it conductive with my
lamp trigger I leave one electrode
sitting at ground potential and then
apply the high voltage to that
conductive reflective wall there and
watch let me hit it there so you can see
a lighting up there it's it's ionizing
the gas inside and making it conductive
and now this is called an external
triggering scheme there are better
methods of triggering here but this
method is effective and it works and it
does look pretty cool this laser is a
very classical design in fact it's very
similar to the first laser ever built so
inside there's a big crystal of ruby
surrounded by a lamp and a a shiny
reflector then I have these two mirrors
here which allow the light to bounce
back and forth and get that optical
amplification but these are very very
special mirrors you can't just stick any
old regular mirrors there and expect it
to work
in fact this laser would annihilate that
in one shot so I have these very special
mirrors made for me by ESCO optics and
they have a very good coating on them
that prevents them from ionizing during
the big laser pulse and in fact I did
some math here and it turns out that the
electric field on the surface of those
mirrors approaches three mega volts per
meter now that's the electric field that
you need to rip apart air molecules in a
lightning strike so that's a very very
strong field so it's amazing that these
mirrors can take the beating from this
laser all right it's time for some test
shots now at first I aimed it at some
plastic this actually has two functions
for one it's fun to blow up plastic with
giant lasers but also I could use this
to test the beam profile and by looking
at the shape of the crater it leaves I
can tell if the mirrors are misaligned
or not
now that extremely intense laser pulse
doesn't bury as deep into the plastic as
you might expect and that's because as
soon as that laser starts to fire the
surface of the plastic begins to boil
off and turns into a hot plasma that
ends up absorbing most of the rest of
the light that comes from the laser so
then all of that energy goes into
heating up that expanding fireball and
you get that explosion there on the
surface but because of that not much
energy makes it to the plastic you just
get a very shallow crater for my second
test I tried shooting through a razor
blade which is a classical test of
pulsed lasers but I ran into a really
interesting issue this lens was brand
new when I put it in front of the laser
to focus it down and in that one shot
that you just saw it caused the glass to
shatter now that is that is amazing
because considering glass is pretty much
clear most of the light passes straight
through it it might absorb something
like 1% of the light going through it so
that 1% is enough to cause that glass to
explode which just shows how
unbelievably high-energy this laser is
that is amazing I never thought I'd see
the day when my lasers would start
eating lenses like candy that's crazy
after seeing the laser blast through
lenses that were actually meant for
taking a lot of light I decided to test
it on another piece of glass this is
soda bottle nuts
[Music]
that did not go as expected so the laser
beam hit right here
it only cracked here but ended up
shattering above it that's really
interesting must have made some weird
stress fractures that caused it to
shatter up there now in future video is
using this laser I don't have to worry
about shattering my lenses because ESCO
sent me some nice few silicon lenses
that won't explode in the laser beam so
I'm excited to put these on the laser
now before I in this video I like to
give a couple thank-yous to people help
support of this project for one I drew
like to thank my patrons because
projects like this are expensive and I
couldn't do it without your support then
also I really like to thank ESCO optics
for making me some awesome years for
this laser like I said earlier it's
really really hard to find mirrors that
don't explode when he hit with 50
kilowatts of laser light so it was
awesome to have them make me some custom
coated mirrors for this like I said if I
were to stick some regular mirrors in
that beam it would just explode and
vaporize and just I mean so quickly
probably just a single shot so it was
awesome to get some good optics for this
and yeah until the next time stay save
and have your lazing