Burning Laser How-To: Make a burning laser pointer | 2 different methods

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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 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

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.