Testing Illegal Blue Lasers from eBay (and making them even stronger)

I'm a big believer that eBay is one of the greatest things to come from the internet age I mean there's always so much interesting and off-the-wall stuff for sale and besides where else am I gonna get my Soviet military surplus or fusion laser optics? now unfortunately eBay has a lot of rules against selling hazardous items and these can be incredibly annoying for those of us who like to play with dangerous stuff. so that means if you're looking to buy things like cyanide or depleted uranium you're gonna have to go to other websites. in terms of lasers eBay bans the sale of handheld laser stronger than five milliwatts (5mW) now unfortunately this is a lot less than the power you need to light stuff on fire now this also happens to be the federal limit in the United States for the sale and import of handheld lasers so in fact anything stronger than this is actually illegal except under special circumstances but honestly this isn't even that horrible of a rule because anything stronger than five milliwatts can do permanent damage to your eyes faster than you can blink. the other thing is overseas sellers obviously don't care about our laws but they still do have to follow eBay's guidelines. well it turns out they actually found a very easy way around these. all they have to do is say that their lasers are eye safe then they can continue to pump out blinding lasers to kids all over the world because what could possibly go wrong there? I went on eBay and bought two blue laser kits for about fifty bucks a piece. now I know what you're thinking why on earth would I show myself breaking federal law on video? well I didn't break the law. the listings explicitly stated that the power output was under five milliwatts I paid money for two low-power legal lasers and nothing else and to top it off I actually found US sellers for these kits so in the event that they turn out over powered it shifts the blame to them because it's not illegal for me to just own a high-powered laser. here I've opened up the boxes to see what's inside now the lasers themselves are different styles but the kids are essentially identical. they come with some lithium ion batteries a charger and some diffraction gratings. now each set also comes with a pair of laser goggles which is a good idea in theory but you'd have to be a total idiot to trust these things to protect your eyes. now before I fire these up I'm gonna put on my own goggles from a legit source cuz I don't know about you guys but I certainly value my eyeballs a lot more than whoever found the cheapest way to put together these kits. now personally I like goggles from survival lasers who know I'm not getting paid to say that I just simply like their stuff in fact I'll never accept payment to promote any laser safety gear now that being said sponsors are a great way to fund all my crazy ideas and projects and I want to give a big thank you to war robots for sponsoring this video war robots is an awesome strategy 6v6 multiplayer warfare game where two teams battle it out in real time with their own personalized war machines now the game has amazing 3d graphics and a huge variety of specialized robots and weapons to choose from help support my crazy projects by downloading and playing this free game for your phone download the game using my link below and you'll get a welcome bonus pack which includes the GI Patton robot and a unique skin for it you also get a full set of weapons as well as 100 gold and 400,000 silver which will give you a huge head start when you start playing war robots has over 100 million players around the world is constantly being updated with new robots new maps and new weapons you get to choose how the game unfolds as there's over 50 robots to choose from the weapons that fit whatever play style you like the developers are even working on a huge new update or you'll be in charge of a whole squad of pilots with over 20 different characters to choose from so what do you say let's play alright let's jam in some batteries and see just how eye safe these things really are and here we go what the? why won't it work? so it turns out the switch on this thing is complete and utter garbage but this thing seems to work alright and what can I say contrary to what it said in the listing eye safe is not how I would describe this in fact it's probably so far over the safety limit that it's laughable I definitely would not want to be hit in the eyes by this after a bit more percussive maintenance I was able to get this laser working again but I wouldn't exactly count on it lasting a long time so what can I do with these extremely dangerous lasers? well a lot of things that is if you like setting things on fire. when properly focused this laser can burn and cut through several different materials due to the high power density it produces. you can light matches it can ignite flash paper. it can cut electrical tape mmm smoked plastic. now it won't ignite my propane tank but it can pop balloons with ease that was pretty fun they can also burn your freaking eyes out with ease nowadays a lot of people get eye injuries from lasers that turn out way stronger than advertised in fact we should measure just how strong these lasers really are here I have this really nice pronto laser power meter by gentec-eo now it'll tell me exactly how strong these lasers are and here we go so well over a watt there 1.5 watts actually yeah so it's literally hundreds of times stronger than advertised. let's check out this other one here mmm so about the same so they're very very powerful yeah if these things were in a lab they'd have to be bolted to a table in a locked room and you need hours of laser safety training before even coming near them so these things are definitely not toys the kits also come with the set diffraction gratings that are commonly called star caps by the sellers now they mount on top of the laser and split up the beam to many different patterns and now I have to admit the effects are downright beautiful on camera by having several laser beams shooting all over the place isn't exactly safe some of the individual beamlets can still be strong enough to cause eye damage even if they're just a fraction of the initial power of the beam. just 1/3 of 1% of the output is it all it takes to damage your eyes faster than you can blink. I obviously have nothing against owning a high-power laser in fact I think lasers are a great hobby but selling something like this is isafe is appalling now you may think it's obvious to be careful with something like this but some sellers say that you can use this for presentations or playing with your cats now that's obviously a terrible idea as even just looking at the spot on the wall without goggles can do permanent eye damage. you make just one mistake with one of these and it's lights out forever. now I know what you're thinking is it possible to make these even stronger? now the answer is obviously yes although it isn't exactly easy and you definitely shouldn't do it but honestly at this point kind of curious what kind of stupid powers I could get out of these if I you know just tear it down and replace some of the parts inside so yeah without further ado let's get started here I've laid out my tools to start surgery on the laser. I'm not ever gonna bother with static protection today because as far as I'm concerned the laser is already defective. the laser casing comes apart with ease to expose the internal laser module. and now there could definitely be improvements to the way this module fits into the casing because as it stands there's a ton of empty space and poor thermal contact between the laser module and the case and now before you ask yes the mod I'm about to do is legal for me as the federal regulations don't ban me from building strong lasers I just can't import or sell something like this as well as a giant list of other things I can't do with it. the most power limiting components in this device is definitely the laser diode now I could just try driving way harder but really this wouldn't give me that much of a power boost and would probably just fry the laser diode so I decided to replace the stock laser diode with this much stronger one and all the stock one is really jammed in there and since I'm not exactly feeling very patient today I think I'm just gonna knock it out of there. you know I gotta admit I definitely feel guilty taking a hammer to Nobel Prize winning technology although I actually think I removed it intact but I already have hundreds of similar laser diodes in hand so it wouldn't exactly be devastating if I broke it. I've mounted the new laser diode by press fitting in a copper heatsink and attaching some leads now I really wish I would have known about silicone wire when I first started messing with electronics because it's just so easy to work with and it bends instead of shearing off connections when it's twisted. here I've had to drill out the hosts a bit to fit the new heatsink then I added a case wire to bring power through the host itself to the laser. the puny driver in this thing isn't nearly strong enough to power the new Beast so I've stripped off all the components to use as a mount for a commercial buck driver. and now the driver fits on nicely but unfortunately the anodizing on the host threads prevents the casing from conducting the way I had intended but luckily just drilling a hole in the laser module and then directly soldering the case lead here is a really easy fix. the laser just screws back together at this point now I'm not exactly sure how the switch is gonna hold up to the higher current demands I'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope it doesn't explode. you know if I wasn't a lazy piece of garbage I'll just use a MOSFET to handle the power switching here. now I guess the last thing to do is swap out the batteries as these cheap stock lithium ions will not cut the current demands of the new set up all right let's see if this thing even works but first I'm gonna fire up this one for reference okay so it's still strong now how about this one oh wow that's way stronger in fact you hear that little pieces of the desk are exploding off when the laser hits oh wow there's actually a little fireball shooting off the surface it's probably easier for me to see through the goggles than on camera but well that's ridiculous that's so scary I want you guys to be able to see this fireball effect so I'm gonna put some goggles over the camera that way you guys have a better view of what's going on all right here we go oh wow that's ridiculous that is some serious power it just forms a plasma on the surface like nothing wow it's amazing that a laser of this power can be built into a handheld device it's so cool now I feel like the camera just isn't doing a great job at showing how much stronger this thing is now so I'm gonna put on the laser power meter alrighty so it's uh okay so it's over five Watts about five and a half watts so it's actually several times stronger than what it was originally you know it's funny because I actually built this thing to be quite a bit stronger than this I was actually wanting eight watts I guess the driver and battery combination just can't quite get that laser diode to its full power well I guess now the only tests that are left are to see what I can burn a destroy so here's a CD case oh wow that's so fast my goodness it cuts right through it like butter let's see how fast it'll cut holes through cardboard... or light it on fire that works too. let's try it against a plastic cup oh wow it keeps lighting a fire okay this is awesome yeah look at that it's amazing a while all right here I'm gonna try lighting a match the hard way so I'm gonna point it here at the matchstick not the actual match head there and try to get that to catch on fire oh it's almost there and there it goes cool all right let's give tape another go Wow slices right through that that's amazing I wonder if it's gonna cut soldering wire I'm definitely going to get behind my camera's viewfinder for this one oh that's close oh wow that's amazing I did not expect to melt something so shiny this one should be easy here's a candle okay a piece of cake that's like the world's fanciest candle lighter I like it I wonder what it will do to this cashew mmm I love the smell of roasted nuts it caught in fire it's so cool all right I got one more dumb one let's see if it can give my arm a haircut oh oh wow I can feel it burning the hairs right off the key to not getting third-degree burns is by not letting it touch the skin oh wow that's awesome that's a high-tech method of Shaving ouch gosh it's such a shame these things are so incredibly dangerous because they're really really cool all right so I feel I may give some mixed messages with this video so I want to clarify a few things so first off if I didn't beat into your heads earlier these things even unmodified are incredibly dangerous and I don't recommend buying one in fact if you're interested in experimenting around with lasers that's awesome because lasers are very educational hobby and there's so much to learn from them but don't start with something as powerful as this that is just a that's just a terrible idea in fact by the time I had built a laser as strong as this one I tinkered with lasers for over five years and granted the technology wasn't available to me when I started this hobby but I'm really really thankful that I had all this time to learn about laser safety and the basics of handling lasers before I ever messed with something so extreme all right before I end this video I got to give you guys a tour of my new shop now I couldn't have gotten this place without all the help from my patreon supporters and my new sponsors so a big THANK YOU to you guys and since the last time I posted I've gotten a ton new awesome stuff like all these giant Soviet vacuum tubes and capacitors and I got more high energy laser optics and crystals up here there's gonna be so many cool things coming from this channel very very soon hey it's funny because the only thing that's really slowing me down at this point is actually shooting the videos I've been working on so many awesome projects recently. having a 100 amp panel is a really nice change for my last place because having more power is always a good thing the videos from my overclocked series on YouTube are probably most popular right now and believe it or not this is actually just a driver for the next episode of that series and yeah I got very very carried away there's parts from like 7 microwaves on there and you're never gonna guess what I'm using it to power up check out this awesome plug that I have it's definitely one of my favorite cords I mean look how thick that is oh yeah it goes to my 100 watt q-switched green laser I've been going through a ton of microwaves recently and I'm down to just 2 so I'm definitely gonna need more microwaves i mounted some of my laser guns on the wall over here. one of these is a moth. that's about it for this video until the next time stay safe and happy lazing

Channel: styropyro

Views: 3,388,488

Rating: 4.8271723 out of 5

Keywords: ebay, laser, pointer, blue, burning, testing, destructive, satire, green, modification, stronger, mod, fix, safety, goggles

Id: DMVWW-bmKwQ

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/LosLosrien]

"the key to not getting 3rd degree burns is not letting it touch your skin"

burns hairs on his arm with it, chuckling

[u/strontal]

This guy talks and presents like some 80s gamer spoof

[u/QTom01]

That's insane. Advertised as 0.005w but its actually 1.5w.

[u/Lionel-Richie]

"Oh hwow"

[u/bodysnatcherz]

Saying he made the laser stronger is a big disingenuous, no? He changed the diode and the components, that's a whole new laser at that point.

[u/mykb10]

"One of these is a moth" -> Where did that come from? Made me laugh.

[u/mehmuhmah]

This guy reminds me of the kid from home alone

[u/SolitaryEgg]

Is anyone else retarded like me and worried about their eyes watching this video on their laptop?

[u/AllForKarmaNaught]

"Haha wow"