Awesome Lasers

Heads or Tales Coins & Collectibles presents a wonderfully satisfying video showing a laser etching machine making a cold storage coin – a physical manifestation of cryptocurrency. These coins feature a unique private key which can be used to unlock its bearer’s Bitcoins.

The daredevil stunt plane Scandinavian Catwalk performed this epic light show at Australia’s 2019 Avalon Airshow. Watch in awe as the plane shoots a stream of fireworks and laser beams, perfectly timed to the music, all while performing flips and rolls in the sky.

Yoshihito Isogawa shows off another impressive build. He used LEGO Technic and Mindstorms parts, along with mirrors and a laser pointer to create a mechanism that can project laser patterns on the wall by rapidly modulating its reflector. Here’s another variant he also made.

BOSSlaser shows off a slick design – a decorative bowl that can be cut from a single sheet of plywood or acrylic. It comes into shape as it stretches like a giant spiral Slinky onto its stand. Gorgonaut’s original template is available on Thingiverse for download.

Techmoan is usually showing off unusual retro tech, this time host Mat has something a bit different. Here, he shows how to play vector-style video games using Wicked Lasers’ LaserOS. Check out StandupMath’s video for a more impressive demo of a laser-based game.

Laser engravers use powerful laser beams to burn designs into wood and other materials. But when Make Anything’s flatbed engraver broke, he decided to take its laser head and turn it into a handheld writing instrument. It’s not the safest thing on Earth, but it is cool.

We’ve seen lasers take off layers of grime and even rubber coatings, but we’re really impressed with this footage of a 1000-watt P-Laser system as it strips off years of rust from old steel in just seconds. More wonderfully satisfying footage here.

Laser engravers are some of the coolest machines you can have in your workshop, and can produce designs with extreme precision. But we’ve never seen one work as fast as the Tykma Vereo, which manages to spit out an entire image on sheet metal in about a minute.

We’ve all seen laser beams which project images using a persistence of vision effect. While the professional gear does it with moving mirrors, Yertle Vert shows off a neat build using 3D-printed cams and a laser pointer to achieve a similar effect. Instructions on Thingiverse.

The VH-80 can emit lasers from either or both ends to quickly measure and record length, area or volume. It has built-in levels and can be mounted on a tripod. You can also control it via its companion smartphone app, which also lets you overlay measurements on a photo.

The LaserDock is a compact RGB laser projector for visualizing music. It comes with easy-to-use Windows and MacOS apps that have hundreds of effects for digital music, MIDI and live instruments. Pair it with a fog machine and mosquito nets to get a cool 3D effect.

Engineers from the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Germany’s Hasso Plattner Institute demonstrate an innovative use for a laser cutter – to not just cut materials, but to use their heat to weld layers together, forming fully-assembled 3D objects in the process.

While laser engraving is typically done on wood or acrylic, this video shows a laser system which is used to add patterns or a pre-washed look to blue jeans. The completed fashions aren’t our style, but the tech is really cool. Plus, the music just makes it so much more dramatic.

Seb Lee-Delisle modified a Nintendo Zapper to fire laser beams and even have smoke come out of the barrel with each shot. It has a pair of LEDs, a laser module, and a vape module. The light effects on the wall are from a separate projector.

“…it’s 400 times over the most dangerous rating imposed by the FDA. So without further ado let’s play with this thing.” A statement that no one should ever say, but YouTuber styropyro utters it as if he was talking about a NERF dart. This thing would be right at home in Fallout 4.

Veritasium breaks down the most requested cosmetic procedure. The melanin in our hair (and skin) protect us by absorbing light. Laser hair removal takes advantage of that by overloading hair with short bursts of heat, enough to damage the cells that produce hair.