I found an old Omnichrome Helium Cadmium laser on eBay a few months ago and had to have a look at it. HeCd lasers are used to produce UV light and generally output only a few mW of power. Sadly, this laser was broken and never fired. I don’t have the tools to properly investigate the cause [...]

I haven’t spent much time playing with my lasers lately so I pulled them out last night to make sure that everything still worked.  This is the first (and probably last) laser video that I shot with my 5D MII – one stray beam and it will destroy the sensor.  This is the same basic home built [...]

I just found this message in my spam filter from Laserglow Technologies.  Normally I wouldn’t post a newsletter like this but they have a great deal on the 593.5nM Rigel laser pointer.  They already have the lowest price for the 3mW version @$299 but they are offering 20% off of that.  Just be sure to [...]

I’ve been working on a new laser scanner video.  This uses my same sound-modulated open loop XY scanner as before.  Watch it here or go on over to Vimeo.com for the HD version.  Enjoy!

Find of the day: a fully self contained bar code scanner and interpreter for $10 at Ax Man Surplus.  That’s right, now I can find a way to add things to my Delicious Library library the really hard way.  All you have to do is take this device and connect it to a serial to [...]

Home made laser scanner based off of a Red, Green, Blue and Violet laser module. Roughly 1/2 watt combined output

The Hardware I wanted to write a basic tutorial on how to create some simple but impressive laser effects for beginners (like me!) All this setup takes is a computer, an old Laser Disc player and some wire cutters. I found these parts in an old laserdisc player from Pioneer circa 1980. These were used [...]

XY Laser scanner controlled by my mac. Longer camera exposures a light smoke were used to display the beam in near darkness. This particular setup is generating a tunnel effect. This is done by drawing a circle with the beam and then placing the camera in the center of the circle, pointed towards the source. [...]

I discovered that, under some conditions, 3M Post-Its glow.  They don’t simply glow, but they exhibit phosphorescence.  I did not expect that. I discovered that basic 3×3 post it notes actually exhibit this when they are hit with my 432nm (bight blue) laser.  The exact Post-Its I used are here: http://www.amazon.com/Post-Notes-Colors-Sheets-654-14AU/dp/B0002DOC68/ref=pd_sbs_op_6 See the video after [...]

XY Laser scanner controlled by my mac. Longer camera exposures a light smoke were used to display the beam in near darkness. The cone-like shape is generated by the scanner.  The origin is the narrow end of the cone shape and the beam can deflect roughly fifteen degrees in either direction.