Crazy Keychain Laser Pointer Upgrades. 5mW to 3000mW+

this video is sponsored by surf shark hey everybody right here i have a classic keychain laser pointer i'm sure most of you have messed with one of these at some point i mean you can buy them pretty much anywhere and they're super cheap online now if you're disappointed that you can't use these things to light stuff on fire then you're definitely not alone but luckily the technology exists to change that in fact upgrading one of these laser pointers is probably the most requested project on this channel so without further ado let's get started 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 you were to try any of this stuff at home he'd probably die so yeah please don't try this at home now i don't know about you guys but i like it when my lasers are a fire hazard now that being said there are a few circumstances where you're better off using these puny lasers in their unmodified state for one presentations i know it's tempting to flex your biggest laser when giving a presentation but unless you're on zoom it's best to keep your audience's retinas intact another occasion where a weak pointer is referred to a death rays for playing with pets in fact a red laser pointer like this is the only laser i recommend for playtime with your little fluff balls if your laser looks like this this or this then you definitely shouldn't use it with your pets that's not to say other colors of light are inherently dangerous but 99 times out of 100 if you buy a laser online that isn't a red keychain it's going to be well over the safety limit and too much of a danger for your pet now there's other interesting stuff you can do with these pointers as well like experimenting with refraction or diffraction or testing for nearsightedness or erasing glow-in-the-dark stuff and a bunch of other tricks as well but i'll leave that stuff for other youtubers because i just want an insanely powerful laser that'll fit on my keychain it's funny because of the few searches i made to buy some of these laser pointers i'm already getting spammed with ads for illegal lasers to be fair these aren't as weird as the ads i get for looking at vacuum tubes or even worse these like come on i'm not even a weeb this is what being cyber stalked by massive corporations looks like especially when they make bad assumptions about my data now luckily there's an easy way around this in fact i'd like to introduce you to my sponsor surf shark with surf shark's clean web service it's super easy to get rid of these annoying ads and stop these companies from stalking me however this really just scratches the surface of what surf shark has to offer surfshark is actually the vpn service that i personally use and they're the only vpn to allow account use across unlimited devices now there are a lot of reasons why someone might find a vpn useful but my biggest reason is for bypassing throttling for one simply blocking your isp from tracking you is a great way to stop being throttled when you watch videos or go to a site that your isp doesn't like for me specifically i run exclusively on hotspot data and i pay for 50 gigabytes of data a month however i get throttled to a snail's crawl pace when i pass just 15 gigabytes of hot spot use now this is just a blatant money grab since i'm allowed to use the full 50 gigabytes of my phone thanks to surfshark and some code i found on google i'm able to use the full 50 gigabytes i paid for bypassing censorship is another popular use of surfshark 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 use my code styropyro to get 84 off and an extra four 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 surfshark for sponsoring this video alright so how do i make this thing stronger without even modifying the internals i can always just jam in a fourth little button cell the power increase is pretty small though and it definitely won't be setting fire to anything since there isn't space to jam in a fifth cell i'm hooking it up to a bench power supply so i can take the voltage even higher alright i'm starting at the rated voltage so we have a reference here um hmm so uh i think it's actually dead i'd even give it more than its rated voltage yet well i am now but it clearly isn't fixing anything i went ahead and took apart that laser pointer i think i found the problem i mean to put it lightly there are literally children out there that would have done a better job designing this the driver circuit is literally just a switch and resistor no filter cap let alone any sort of current regulation i think the reason they can get away with this is due to the high internal resistance of these little button cells that means that it may have actually been my bench supply that killed it even though the voltage was set correctly now notice that the bare laser diode is mounted directly on the circuit board here with very little in terms of heat sinking a powerful laser diode would fry itself in seconds in a configuration like this so that only means that this puny laser diode was never capable of much power in the first place you know maybe i've been too hard on the simplicity of this thing because let's be honest most of what i make is garbage as well now that being said this thing needs some serious hardware upgrades and first of all i'm going to need a stronger laser diode this is actually the perfect opportunity to justify my horde of computer trash i probably already have a suitable diode sitting in the dvd burner of a dead computer extracting these diodes can be tricky but with a careful touch it can be done pretty reliably [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] i'd call that a successful harvest i don't know if you noticed but i actually pulled two laser diodes out of that dvd burner and i'm running them off of the computer's power supply this one was used for writing dvds and this one was used for riding cds now don't let the dim output on this one fool you this laser is actually very dangerous things look quite a bit different on an eye or a camera and you can see just how much ir light this laser is producing now this is actually kind of scary since if someone pulled this diode as opposed to the dvd diode and didn't know any better they might think it's just a broken red laser due to the dim beam but in reality it's actually an extremely dangerous near ir laser i always find it entertaining to stick my hand in the beam of a near-ir laser like this the wavelength of light is poorly absorbed by flesh so most of the light makes it through my hand and lights up my veins while doing so in fact i've been hit by a laser of the same wavelength but a thousand times stronger without even getting burned of course the real danger from lasers isn't skin burns it's taking a reflection and going blind forever the red laser from the dvd burner is not only considerably brighter but it's also a few times more powerful than the cd laser so obviously this is the diode that will be going in the keychain laser to top it off these lasers can do some tricks that you can't even pull off with stronger blue laser diodes this is because these dvd lasers have excellent beam quality compared to most hobby burning lasers i'll go more into this later but the improved beam quality is even suitable for building an optical trap when i stick this marker in the focal point of the laser beam pieces of it burn off as expected however some of those particles actually get trapped there and will stay there indefinitely if the air is still if you hate yourself enough i suggest checking out my video on this nobel prize winning phenomenon alright that's enough screwing around it's time to jam this in a laser pointer these pointers are just press fit together so it isn't too difficult to get them apart i obviously don't need the original laser diode since it's dead but i do need the driver board it's on unlike the original driver i need something with current regulation so the diode doesn't just fry itself the second is turned on now luckily i don't have to design anything fancy that's because i have these this is the amc 7135 an led driver ic that used to be very popular among hobbyists for driving dvd lasers i want to thank icecruncher from the laser forms for reminding me of these things because i actually have some of these chips left over after buying some 13 years ago along with a filter capacitor these make a simple and compact way of driving a dvd laser the original switchboard gives power to the new driver here and the circuit is completed through the conductive casing now what about batteries the short circuit current on these button cells is pathetically low so clearly i need something a bit better thankfully i bought some 10180 cells specifically for this project it turns out that these are actually the cutest batteries i've ever used on this channel alright here goes nothing okay that's pretty cool quite the upgrade compared to the original one that's for sure not gonna lie this thing's absurd i mean it feels like a toy but it's actually extremely dangerous most importantly though it can burn stuff and that's what matters the most let's test that out by letting a couple matches nice some balloons what about some thin plastic huh it's like a tiny little lightsaber here's one that isn't as visually impressive but is still very cool when i hit this block of wood with a laser it makes a little wisp of smoke and even engraves it a little now let me put some laser goggles in front of the camera to filter out that red light see those white flashes there that's from bits of the material getting white hot these dvd lasers are single spatial mode which means the output can be focused down to an extremely tiny point this high beam quality is necessary for reading or writing the minuscule grooves of optical discs this also means that the power densities attainable are off the charts i did some rough calculations to give you an idea on how crazy these numbers can get a fraction of a watt doesn't seem like much but when that's focused onto a spot a hundredth of the width of a human hair that gives an optical power density that's ten thousand times higher than the sun's surface using this value you can calculate the upper limit of temperature for an object being heated by the laser a tiny black particle in an environment where the only loss of heat is via radiation would heat to nearly 60 thousand degrees by the laser if you look at volume power densities you're dealing with values that are several orders of magnitude higher than what you'd find inside a nuclear reactor these crazy numbers give some insight into why a device with relatively low output power can burn stuff or more importantly why they're an extreme eye hazard i mean you can see right here why a direct hit from the laser is like staring into a million suns for those calculations i just used ballpark estimates for the total output power but i can actually measure it directly with my pronto laser power meter by gentec eo okay so around 200 milliwatts or so hmm i mean it is 40 times stronger than what can legally be sold as a laser pointer but it also doesn't quite make it into the most dangerous classification of all which is class 4. i'm going to have to do better than this i need at least 500 milliwatts to achieve that class 4 rating but unfortunately i won't be able to do that with this laser so i'm going to need an even stronger laser diode now i still want to use red diodes for a few reasons for one red lasers don't get much love from the hobbyist anymore and that's because huge blue lasers are easily attainable but also i'm lazy and the lower forward voltage is easier to deal with choosing the right laser diode gets tricky when you're dealing with red and there aren't many options to pick from using the traditional strategy of buying sketchy laser parts on ebay you might be tempted to buy the most powerful diode you can find it turns out that if you go this route you'll be buying what's perhaps the most cursed laser diode on the market yup that thing makes three separate laser beams sure it makes a ton of red light but combining those beams into one would be incredibly difficult especially in a tiny laser pointer this must have been intended for use as just a compact red light source because i don't know of anything that could make use of a beam like that lowering your expectations a bit will lead you to this laser diode or one very similar it's not two and a half watts like the tri-beam monster but it does still cross the class 4 threshold that being said this thing still produces an absolutely garbage beam i mean it's basically a line in the far field and that's because one axis of the beam diverges much faster than the other hobbyists do make use of trash beams like this by using various methods of beam correction but i don't exactly have the space inside a keychain laser to jam in a cylindrical lens telescope now i did come across a listing for some powerful red diodes that claim to have fast access correction is there a manufacturer listed no is the data sheet made up probably so it must be a scam right nope these are actually as impressive as they are sketchy what's special about this diode is that a tiny fiber lens is placed immediately in front of the emitter and it only changes the exit angle of one axis of the beam in this case the fast axis collimator makes it so the divergence on each axis is roughly the same which gives a square beam when collimated in the far field this is much more acceptable than dealing with a line and to top it off this laser diode is rated for over a watt now it's time to jam this scary piece of technology inside a laser pointer as usual for a build like this i never plan anything out and just start adding and moving parts around until things fit and work for a driver i just wired a few of these amc 7135 chips in parallel and threw in a filter cap for good measure the high current draw means that the original switch probably wouldn't hold up here so i wired it so that it just signals to a mosfet to handle the power switching now i know what you're thinking all that stuff jammed in such a tiny housing has got to be a thermal nightmare right yes jamming everything together wasn't easy but i did it and now it's time to power it up hopefully my cute batteries will hold up to the extra power demand alright here goes nothing oh my gosh that thing should not exist just to give you an idea on how dumb this thing is if you were to come across a laser of similar power in a lab it would have to be bolted to a table in the locked room with all the windows blacked out and anybody who wanted to use it would have to go through laser safety training now just because it's dumb doesn't mean it isn't awesome in fact one of the biggest improvements of this build over the dvd laser is in the brightness increase the wavelength is about 20 nanometers shorter on this one which makes it massively brighter and also slightly more orange what for what the color itself is actually three times brighter than from the dvd laser and that's without even considering the extra power of course the biggest improvement evolves in its burning capabilities the new laser can burn things much faster than the dvd laser they can punch through thicker materials as well however the beam quality is quite a bit worse and ironically this means the max attainable power density is also lower even so the power increases high enough to overcome the wider beam when it comes to most burning tricks an even cooler trick for this laser is using it with glow-in-the-dark surfaces i've demonstrated on my channel before what a violet or uv laser looks like when used on a surface like this however when you try this with red light the photon energy is just too low to excite the material that being said if i first excite the surface with something like a camera flash and then hit it with a red laser the red light actually erases the glow it's as if it's some quantum mechanical eraser i can think of two separate mechanisms for why this happens heating by the laser does play a role here and even rubbing the surface with my finger heats it enough via friction to cause a streak of brighter glow this area would eventually become slightly dimmer than the surroundings due to faster loss of stored energy now the main reason goes into the quantum mechanics of how these phosphorescent materials work in the first place in the related phenomenon fluorescence a material absorbs light of higher energy and releases light of lower energy soon after phosphorescence is like this except there's a much longer period of time between absorption and emission of light this is because the light releasing step is actually a forbidden transition that is that the quantum mechanical selection rules forbid the transition from happening under usual approximations however effects from things like heat and other weak interactions allow the probability of relaxation to go slightly above zero which allows the material to slowly release light over minutes or hours the red light may be too weak to directly excite the material but the photons do have enough energy to further excite the already exciting material this promotes electrons to energy levels where energy release is allowed and thus you get a short bright release of light where the laser hits followed by no more light emission as the material there is depleted of energy all right so one thing i've yet to do is measure the output power of this little laser let's see what we have here okay about 800 milliwatts or so well the batteries must be sagging a bit but at least it's well into the class 4 territory when it comes to handheld lasers i like setting records even if that means chasing some obscure measure that others have yet to try competing in earlier this year i showed you the most powerful cw handheld laser in the world and a couple years ago i showed you the brightest handheld laser for its size the record i was going for in this video was the highest power to weight ratio in a handheld laser now my laser should win this hands down right well it turns out a 15 year old in greece named mianis has already built something better my laser has a power to mass ratio of a little over 50 ml watts per gram his laser weighs more but it's also much more powerful giving a ratio of roughly 60 ml watts per gram that's right a little child beat me at my own game and i made up the rules even more impressive is that he designed the high current high efficiency driver that makes his build possible i can't just finish this video without at least beating the record so thanks to this kid now i have to build something really ridiculous for starters i'm going to have to abandon red laser diodes in exchange for more powerful blue ones there's a reason most of my reckless laser projects use blue lasers and that's because the diodes are available in higher powers than any other visible wavelength i need roughly a watt to break the record i'm after and this is a walk in the park for most of the blue laser diodes i have on hand this does bring up another issue though these diodes have a higher forward voltage than the red laser i was using which means the voltage of these batteries is too low without some sort of boost circuit thankfully i already have the perfect driver on hand this tiny boost driver was designed by the rogue engineer from belarus who goes by spirit it's funny because the only reason he designed this impressive little circuit was just to prove a point the boosting ability along with a wide input range means i can push my poor little batteries to their absolute limits and the enable feature means i don't have to jam in a separate mosfet to prevent eating the little switch not surprisingly the driver works great with a 1 watt blue laser diode and jamming all that stuff in the pointer housing went easier than expected now that is what i call a reckless testament to modern technology a laser this size definitely shouldn't be that bright and it definitely shouldn't be so good at lighting things on fire either most materials tend to absorb blue light stronger than red light so even at similar power levels blue lasers tend to be better at burning things now for the million dollar question does it break the record the laser weighs only 13 and a half grams which means i only need a little over 800 milliwatts to break the record here goes nothing wait what are you kidding me the problem here isn't with the driver as the laser outputs the expected power when hooked to my bench supply i think i've just finally hit the limit here with these little batteries i guess at this point i just have to concede defeat i'm just kidding it's time to build an abomination enter the super capacitor with property somewhere between a battery and a capacitor these can provide higher current than my batteries with the drawback of lower energy storage a single one of these would easily operate the blue keychain laser but if i'm going to go this route i might as well knock that record out of the park i'll be using these super caps to drive an extremely powerful laser dive that's capable of several watts what's so cursed about my plan here is that i won't be using a driver i'm hoping i can rely on the super cap's esr to prevent frying the laser of course this requires some trial and error because i'm not even going to bother with calculations i stuck a couple super caps in series and then discharged them through a resistor of progressively lower values to watch the peak current eventually i was able to remove the resistor entirely and run the laser diode directly off the super caps it's funny because this method brings us full circle to the original driver of these puny keychain lasers in both cases they're relying on what amounts to some inexact resistance to prevent the laser from being destroyed the main difference is that this laser should be almost a thousand times stronger jamming all that stuff in the pointer was incredibly sketchy especially since those super caps are live the super caps are in there for good so i had to add this ugly port on the side for recharging it when it dies after 30 seconds of use kids this is why you go to engineering school so you don't build absolute garbage like this well i really hope this thing doesn't explode holy heck that thing's bright yup that is definitely the worst thing i've ever made so does it break the record the laser weighs a little under 17 grams which means i need a hair over a watt to achieve this the moment of truth wow look at that over three watts yeah it's dropping pretty fast now but still holding over a lot that is one scary keychain laser and i'm both proud and embarrassed to share it with you guys this would be an awesome opportunity for a giveaway since i really don't know what to do with all these lasers unfortunately i would go to jail if i did this so that means i have to do the next best thing and light a ton of stuff on fire [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] well that's about all i have for you today so until the next time stay safe and happy lazing [Music]

Channel: styropyro

Views: 9,142,397

Keywords: keychain, key-chain, laser, upgrade

Id: h9lbrr04XBQ

Length: 23min 42sec (1422 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020